preparations of the barbarians and derided
their childish simplicity in supposing that he would allow them calmly
to move up their towers till they touched his wall, without using his
artillery to cripple their advance.

Though the attack with the towers had thus failed there was still fierce
fighting to be done on the south-east and north-west of the City. At the
Praenestine Gate (_Porta Maggiore_), that noble structure which is formed
out of the arcades of the Aqueducts, there was a desperate onslaught of
the barbarians, which at one time seemed likely to be successful, but a
sudden sortie of Belisarius taking them in their rear turned them to
headlong flight. In the opposite quarter the Aurelian Gate was commanded
by the mighty tomb-fortress then known as the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and
now, in its dismantled and degraded state, as the Castle of Sant'Angelo.
Here the peculiar shape of the fortress prevented the defenders from
using their _Balistae_ with proper effect on the advancing foe, and when
the besiegers were close under the walls the bolts from the engines flew
over their heads. It seemed as if, after all, by the Aurelian Gate the
barbarians would enter Rome, when, by a happy instinct, the garrison
turned to the marble statues which surrounded the tomb, wrenched them
from their bases, and rained down such a terrible shower of legs and
arms and heads of gods and goddesses on their barbarian assailants that
these soon fled in utter confusion.

The whole result of this great day of assault was to convince Witigis
and his counsellors that the City could not be taken in that manner, and
that the siege must be turned into a blockade. A general sally which
Belisarius ordered, against his better judgment, in order to still the
almost mutinous clamours of his troops, and which took place about the
fiftieth day of the siege, proved almost as disastrous for the Romans as
the assault had done for the Goths. It was manifest that this was not a
struggle which could be ended by a single blow on either side. All the
miseries of a long siege must be endured both by attackers and attacked,
and the only question was on which side patience would first give
way--whether the Romans under roofs, but short of provisions, or the
Goths better fed, but encamped on the deadly Campagna, would be the
first to succumb to hunger and disease.

Witigis had been in his day a brave soldier, but he evidently knew
nothing of the art of war. He a