unwholesome and
pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely
disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained, that
some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures,
whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers, (such was the horrid
conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast,) even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their
slaughtered infants! Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired
in their houses, or in the streets, for want of sustenance; and as the
public sepulchres without the walls were in the power of the enemy the
stench, which arose from so many putrid and unburied carcasses, infected
the air; and the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by
the contagion of a pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and
effectual relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of
Ravenna, supported for some time, the fainting resolution of the Romans,
till at length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the
offers of a praeternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, praefect of the city,
had been persuaded, by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners,
that, by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could
extract the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial
fires against the camp of the Barbarians. The important secret was
communicated to Innocent, the bishop of Rome; and the successor of St.
Peter is accused, perhaps without foundation, of preferring the safety
of the republic to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when
the question was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an
essential condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the
Capitol, by the authority, and in the presence, of the magistrates, the
majority of that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the
Divine or of the Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act, which
appeared almost equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism.

The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the king of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors
to negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator, of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to John, the first tribu