the absence of their
companions; and the Goths, alike destitute of hope and subsistence,
clamorously urged their departure before the truce should expire, and
the Roman cavalry should again be united. One year and nine days after
the commencement of the siege, an army, so lately strong and triumphant,
burnt their tents, and tumultuously repassed the Milvian bridge. They
repassed not with impunity: their thronging multitudes, oppressed in a
narrow passage, were driven headlong into the Tyber, by their own fears
and the pursuit of the enemy; and the Roman general, sallying from the
Pincian gate, inflicted a severe and disgraceful wound on their retreat.
The slow length of a sickly and desponding host was heavily dragged
along the Flaminian way; from whence the Barbarians were sometimes
compelled to deviate, lest they should encounter the hostile garrisons
that guarded the high road to Rimini and Ravenna. Yet so powerful was
this flying army, that Vitiges spared ten thousand men for the defence
of the cities which he was most solicitous to preserve, and detached
his nephew Uraias, with an adequate force, for the chastisement of
rebellious Milan. At the head of his principal army, he besieged Rimini,
only thirty-three miles distant from the Gothic capital. A feeble
rampart, and a shallow ditch, were maintained by the skill and valor of
John the Sanguinary, who shared the danger and fatigue of the meanest
soldier, and emulated, on a theatre less illustrious, the military
virtues of his great commander. The towers and battering-engines of the
Barbarians were rendered useless; their attacks were repulsed; and the
tedious blockade, which reduced the garrison to the last extremity of
hunger, afforded time for the union and march of the Roman forces.
A fleet, which had surprised Ancona, sailed along the coast of the
Hadriatic, to the relief of the besieged city. The eunuch Narses landed
in Picenum with two thousand Heruli and five thousand of the bravest
troops of the East. The rock of the Apennine was forced; ten thousand
veterans moved round the foot of the mountains, under the command
of Belisarius himself; and a new army, whose encampment blazed with
innumerable lights, appeared to advance along the Flaminian way.
Overwhelmed with astonishment and despair, the Goths abandoned the siege
of Rimini, their tents, their standards, and their leaders; and Vitiges,
who gave or followed the example of flight, never halted till he found