to Ravenna, which
immediately followed the battle of the Adda, there seems to have been a
general movement throughout Italy, headed by the Catholic clergy, for
the purpose of throwing off his yoke, and if we do not misread the
obscure language of the Panegyrist, this movement was accompanied by a
wide-spread popular conspiracy, somewhat like the Sicilian Vespers of a
later day, to which the _foederati_, the still surviving adherents of
Odovacar, scattered over their various domains in Italy, appear to have
fallen victims.

Only two cities, Caesena and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to
Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490
to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a
terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the
end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals,
and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of
hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits whom
Odovacar had by some means attracted to his standard, was repelled after
a desperate encounter. During all this time Theodoric, from his
entrenched camp in the great pine-wood of Ravenna, was watching
jealously to see that no provisions entered the city by land, and in
492, after taking Rimini, he brought a fleet of swift vessels thence to
a harbour about six miles from Ravenna, and thus completed its
investment by sea.

In the beginning of 493 the misery of the besieged city became
unendurable, and Odovacar, with infinite reluctance, began to negotiate
for its surrender. His son Thelane was handed over as a hostage for his
fidelity, and the parleying between the two rival chiefs began on the
25th of February. On the following day Theodoric and his Ostrogoths
entered Classis, the great naval emporium, about three miles from the
city; and on the 27th, by the mediation of the Bishop, peace was
formally concluded between the warring kings.

The peace, the surrender of the city, the acceptance of the rule of "the
new King from the East", were apparently placed under the especial
guardianship of the Church. "The most blessed man, the Archbishop John",
says a later ecclesiastical historian,[56] "opened the gates of the
city, 5 March, 493, which Odovacar had closed, and went forth with
crosses and thuribles and the Holy Gospels, seeking peace. While the
priests and the rest of the clergy round him intoned the psalms, he,
fa