s he had
found them. He had at least--and with what scarcity of men and money
we may see in his letters to the emperor--opposed and perhaps stemmed
the overwhelming Gothic advance. At his departure the imperialists
held Ravenna, Rome (but after the sack of 546), Rimini, Spoleto,
Ancona, and Perugia. But before he arrived in Constantinople, Perugia
had fallen; in the same year, 549, a mutiny in Rome gave the City to
the Goths and Rimini was betrayed. In the year 551, the year of
Narses' appointment as general-in-chief in Italy and the opening of
the third period, only Ravenna and Ancona, with Hydruntum (Otranto)
and Crotona in southern Italy, remained to the empire.

In that year, 551, however, everywhere the Gothic cause began to fail.
In a sea-fight off Sinigaglia the imperial forces disposed of the
Gothic sea power and relieved Ancona, which was in grave danger. About
the same time Sicily was delivered from the Gothic yoke, and in the
spring of 552 Crotona was relieved. Meanwhile, in Illyricum, Narses
gathered his army, in which Ardoin, King of the Lombards, rode at the
head of two thousand of his people, and prepared for the great march
into Italy.

He came through Venetia round the head of the Adriatic, close to the
sea (for a formidable Frankish host held the great roads), crossing
with what anxiety we may guess, the mouths of the Piave, the Brenta,
the Adige, and the Po by means of his ships, and having thus turned
the flank of the Frankish armies he triumphantly marched into Ravenna.
There he remained for nine days, as it were another Caesar about to
cross the Rubicon.

While he waited in Ravenna an insulting challenge reached him from the
barbarian Usdrilas who held Rimini. "After your boasted preparations,
which have kept all Italy in a ferment, and after striking terror into
our hearts by knitting your brows and looking more awful than mortal
men, you have crept into Ravenna and are skulking there afraid of the
very name of the Goths. Come out with all that mongrel host of
barbarians to whom you want to deliver Italy and let us behold you,
for the eyes of the Goths hunger for the sight of you."[1] And Narses
laughed at the insolence of the barbarian, and presently he set
forward with the army he had made, upon the great road through Classis
for Rimini, till he came to the bridge over the Marecchia, there which
Augustus had built and which was held by the enemy. There in the fight
which followed--little mor