r horses
loose like the Goths. There is no need for tactics; the fight is hand to
hand; every man, says Procopius, rushing at the man nearest him.

For a third of the day Teia fights in front, sheltered by his long
pavisse, stabbing with a mighty lance at the mob which makes at him, as
dogs at a boar at bay. Procopius is awed by the man. Most probably he
saw him with his own eyes. Second in valour, he says, to none of the
Heroes.

Again and again his shield is full of darts. Without moving a foot,
without turning an inch right or left, says Procopius, he catches another
from his shield-bearer, and fights on. At last he has twelve lances in
his shield, and cannot move it: coolly he calls for a fresh one, as if he
were fixed to the soil, thrusts back the enemy with his left hand, and
stabs at them with his right. But his time is come. As he shifts his
shield for a moment his chest is exposed, and a javelin is through him.
And so ends the last hero of the East Goths. They put his head upon a
pole, and carry it round the lines to frighten the Goths. The Goths are
long past frightening.

All day long, and all the next day, did the Germans fight on, Burgund and
Gepid against Goth, neither giving nor taking quarter, each man dying
where he stood, till human strength could bear up no longer, while Narses
sat by, like an ugly Troll as he was, smiling to see the Teuton slay the
Teuton, for the sake of their common enemy. Then the Goths sent down to
Narses. They were fighting against God. They would give in, and go
their ways peaceably, and live with some other Teuton nations after their
own laws. They had had enough of Italy, poor fellows, and of the
Nibelungen hoard. Only Narses, that they might buy food on the journey
back, must let them have their money, which he had taken in various towns
of Italy.

Narses agreed. There was no use fighting more with desperate men. They
should go in peace. And he kept his faith with them. Perhaps he dared
not break it. He let them go, like a wounded lion crawling away from the
hunter, up through Italy, and over the Po, to vanish. They and their
name became absorbed in other nations, and history knows the East Goths
no more.

So perished, by their own sins, a noble nation; and in perishing,
destroyed utterly the Roman people. After war and famine followed as
usual dreadful pestilence, and Italy lay waste for years. Henceforth the
Italian population was not Roman, bu