than a general should have done, did great deeds of valour. He was
mounted on a noble steed, dark roan, with a white star on its forehead,
which the barbarians, from that mark on its brow, called "Balan". Some
Imperial soldiers who had deserted to the enemy knew the steed and his
rider, and shouted to their comrades to aim all their darts at Balan. So
the cry "Balan! Balan!" resounded through the Gothic ranks, and though
only imperfectly understood by many of the utterers, had the effect of
concentrating the fight round Belisarius and the dark-roan steed. The
general was nobly protected by the picked troops which formed his guard.
They fell by scores around him, but he himself, desperately fighting,
received never a wound, though a thousand of the noblest Goths lay dead
in the narrow space of ground where this Homeric combat had been going
forward. The Imperialists not merely withstood the Gothic onset, but
drove their opponents back to their camp, which had been already erected
on the Roman bank of the Tiber. Fresh troops, especially of cavalry,
issuing forth from thence turned the tide of battle, and, overborne by
irresistible numbers, Belisarius and his soldiers were soon in full
flight towards Rome. When they arrived under the walls, with the
barbarians so close behind them that they seemed to form one raging
multitude, they found the gates closed against them by the
panic-stricken garrison. Even Belisarius in vain shouted his orders to
open the gates; in his gory face and dust-stained figure the defenders
did not recognise their brilliant leader. A halt was called, a desperate
charge was made upon the pursuing Goths, who were already beginning to
pour down into the fosse; they were pushed back some distance, not far,
but far enough to enable the Imperialists to reform their ranks, to make
the presence of the general known to the defenders on the walls, to have
the gates opened, and in some sort of military order to enter the city.
Thus the sun set on Rome beleaguered, the barbarians outside the City.
Belisarius with his gallant band of soldiers thinned but not
disheartened by the struggle, within its walls, and the citizens--

"with terror dumb,
Or whispering with white lips, 'The foe, they come, they come!"

[Footnote 147: Now the Ponte Molle.]

Of the great Siege of Rome, which began on that day, early in March,
537, and lasted a year and nine days, till March, 538, a siege perha