of Naples a fleet of galleys and a body of Thracian and Armenian
soldiers. They landed in Sicily, which yielded its copious stores
of provisions; but the delays of the new commander, an unwarlike
magistrate, protracted the sufferings of the besieged; and the succors,
which he dropped with a timid and tardy hand, were successively
intercepted by the armed vessels stationed by Totila in the Bay of
Naples. The principal officer of the Romans was dragged, with a rope
round his neck, to the foot of the wall, from whence, with a trembling
voice, he exhorted the citizens to implore, like himself, the mercy of
the conqueror. They requested a truce, with a promise of surrendering
the city, if no effectual relief should appear at the end of thirty
days. Instead of one month, the audacious Barbarian granted them three,
in the just confidence that famine would anticipate the term of their
capitulation. After the reduction of Naples and Cumae, the provinces
of Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, submitted to the king of the Goths.
Totila led his army to the gates of Rome, pitched his camp at Tibur,
or Tivoli, within twenty miles of the capital, and calmly exhorted
the senate and people to compare the tyranny of the Greeks with the
blessings of the Gothic reign.

[Footnote 6112: This is not quite correct: he had crossed the Po before
the battle of Faenza.--M.]

The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the revolution
which three years' experience had produced in the sentiments of the
Italians. At the command, or at least in the name, of a Catholic
emperor, the pope, [7] their spiritual father, had been torn from the
Roman church, and either starved or murdered on a desolate island. [8]
The virtues of Belisarius were replaced by the various or uniform vices
of eleven chiefs, at Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, &c.,
who abused their authority for the indulgence of lust or avarice. The
improvement of the revenue was committed to Alexander, a subtle scribe,
long practised in the fraud and oppression of the Byzantine schools,
and whose name of Psalliction, the scissors, [9] was drawn from the
dexterous artifice with which he reduced the size without defacing the
figure, of the gold coin. Instead of expecting the restoration of peace
and industry, he imposed a heavy assessment on the fortunes of the
Italians. Yet his present or future demands were less odious than a
prosecution of arbitrary rigor against the persons and