is
own masterpiece. Rome now contains about thirty of the same character.
When the ditch of St. Angelo was cleansed under Urban VIII., the workmen
found the sleeping Faun of the Barberini palace; but a leg, a thigh, and
the right arm, had been broken from that beautiful statue, (Winkelman,
Hist. de l'Art, tom. ii. p. 52, 53, tom iii. p. 265.)]

[Footnote 84: Procopius has given the best description of the temple of
Janus a national deity of Latium, (Heyne, Excurs. v. ad l. vii. Aeneid.)
It was once a gate in the primitive city of Romulus and Numa, (Nardini,
p. 13, 256, 329.) Virgil has described the ancient rite like a poet
and an antiquarian.] Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers, to
provide all the instruments of attack which antiquity had invented.
Fascines were prepared to fill the ditches, scaling-ladders to ascend
the walls. The largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of four
battering-rams: their heads were armed with iron; they were suspended by
ropes, and each of them was worked by the labor of fifty men. The
lofty wooden turrets moved on wheels or rollers, and formed a spacious
platform of the level of the rampart. On the morning of the nineteenth
day, a general attack was made from the Praenestine gate to the Vatican:
seven Gothic columns, with their military engines, advanced to the
assault; and the Romans, who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and
anxiety to the cheerful assurances of their commander. As soon as the
enemy approached the ditch, Belisarius himself drew the first arrow; and
such was his strength and dexterity, that he transfixed the foremost of
the Barbarian leaders.

As shout of applause and victory was reechoed along the wall. He drew a
second arrow, and the stroke was followed with the same success and the
same acclamation. The Roman general then gave the word, that the archers
should aim at the teams of oxen; they were instantly covered with mortal
wounds; the towers which they drew remained useless and immovable, and
a single moment disconcerted the laborious projects of the king of the
Goths. After this disappointment, Vitiges still continued, or feigned
to continue, the assault of the Salarian gate, that he might divert the
attention of his adversary, while his principal forces more strenuously
attacked the Praenestine gate and the sepulchre of Hadrian, at the
distance of three miles from each other. Near the former, the double
walls of the Vivarium [85] were low