royal residence of Theodoric, from the
harbour-town of Classis to the canals and branches of the Padus, which,
particularly to the west, formed a natural line of defence.

The old aristocratic city had indeed, even at that time, lost much of
the glory in which it had rejoiced for nearly two centuries as the
residence of the Roman emperors; and the last rays which the splendid
reign of Theodoric had shed over it, were extinguished since the
breaking out of the war.

But even thus, what a different impression must the still
thickly-populated city--similar to the present Venice--have made at
that period, in comparison with its aspect at present; when the
interior of the city, with its silent streets, its deserted squares and
its lonely basilicas, appears to the beholder no less melancholy than
the plain outside the walls, where the desolate and marshy levels of
the Padus stretch far away, until they are lost in the mud of the
receding sea.

Where once the harbour-town of Classis was filled with active life on
land and sea; where the proud triremes of the royal fleet of Ravenna
rocked on the blue waters, now lie swampy meadows, in whose tall reeds
and grass the wild buffalo feeds; the streets foul with stagnant water;
the harbour choked with sand; the once joyous population vanished; only
one gigantic tower of the time of the Goths still stands near the sole
remaining Basilica, of Saint Apollonaris in _Classe fuori_, which,
commenced by Witichis and completed by Justinian, now rises sadly out
of the marshy plain, far from any human abode.

In the time of which our story speaks the strong fortress was
considered impregnable, and for that reason the emperors, when their
power began to decay, had chosen it for their residence.

The south-eastern side was at that time protected by the sea, which
rolled its waves to the very foot of the walls, and on the other three
sides nature and art had spun a labyrinthine network of canals,
ditches, and swamps, begotten by the many-armed Padus, among which all
besiegers were hopelessly entangled.

And the walls! Even yet their mighty ruins fill the traveller with
amazement. Their colossal width, and less their height than the number
of strong round towers, which even now (1863) rise above the
battlements, defied, before the invention of gunpowder, every means of
attack.

It was only by starving the city that, after a resistance of nearly
four years, the great Theodoric won this, O