m
the calamity of famine." Tiberius forgave the reproach, and relieved the
distress: a supply of corn was transported from Egypt to the Tyber; and
the Roman people, invoking the name, not of Camillus, but of St. Peter
repulsed the Barbarians from their walls. But the relief was accidental,
the danger was perpetual and pressing; and the clergy and senate,
collecting the remains of their ancient opulence, a sum of three
thousand pounds of gold, despatched the patrician Pamphronius to lay
their gifts and their complaints at the foot of the Byzantine throne.
The attention of the court, and the forces of the East, were diverted by
the Persian war: but the justice of Tiberius applied the subsidy to
the defence of the city; and he dismissed the patrician with his best
advice, either to bribe the Lombard chiefs, or to purchase the aid of
the kings of France. Notwithstanding this weak invention, Italy was
still afflicted, Rome was again besieged, and the suburb of Classe, only
three miles from Ravenna, was pillaged and occupied by the troops of a
simple duke of Spoleto. Maurice gave audience to a second deputation
of priests and senators: the duties and the menaces of religion were
forcibly urged in the letters of the Roman pontiff; and his nuncio,
the deacon Gregory, was alike qualified to solicit the powers either of
heaven or of the earth.

The emperor adopted, with stronger effect, the measures of his
predecessor: some formidable chiefs were persuaded to embrace the
friendship of the Romans; and one of them, a mild and faithful
Barbarian, lived and died in the service of the exarchs: the passes of
the Alps were delivered to the Franks; and the pope encouraged them
to violate, without scruple, their oaths and engagements to the
misbelievers. Childebert, the great-grandson of Clovis, was persuaded
to invade Italy by the payment of fifty thousand pieces; but, as he had
viewed with delight some Byzantine coin of the weight of one pound of
gold, the king of Austrasia might stipulate, that the gift should be
rendered more worthy of his acceptance, by a proper mixture of these
respectable medals. The dukes of the Lombards had provoked by frequent
inroads their powerful neighbors of Gaul. As soon as they were
apprehensive of a just retaliation, they renounced their feeble and
disorderly independence: the advantages of real government, union,
secrecy, and vigor, were unanimously confessed; and Autharis, the son of
Clepho, had alread