to Rome, hoping to take the City, as his soldiers said,
"at the first shout". But he had Belisarius to deal with, not Bessas.
There had not yet been time even to make new gates for the City instead
of those which Totila had destroyed, but Belisarius planted all his
bravest soldiers in the void places where the gates should be, and
guarded the approach by caltrops (somewhat like those wherewith Bruce
defended his line at Bannockburn), so as to make a charge of Gothic
cavalry impossible. Three long days of hard-fought battle were spent
round the fateful City. In each the Goths, whatever temporary advantages
they might gain, were finally repulsed, and at length Totila, who was
not going to repeat the error of Witigis, marched away from the too
well-known scene, amid the bitter reproaches of the Gothic nobles, who
before had praised him like a god for all his valour and dexterity in
war, but now, on the morrow of his first great blunder, loudly upbraided
him for his imprudence, adding the obvious and easy piece of Epimethean
criticism, "that the City ought either to have been utterly destroyed,
or else occupied with a sufficient force". Meanwhile Belisarius at his
leisure completed the repair of the walls, hung the massive gates on
their hinges, had keys made to fit their locks, and sent the duplicate
keys to Justinian. The Roman Empire once again had Rome.

And yet this re-occupation of the Eternal City, brilliant and striking
achievement as it was, had little influence on the course of the war.
Rome was now like a great stone left in an alluvial plain showing where
the river had once flowed, but the currents of commerce, of politics, of
war, flowed now in other channels. Belisarius, leaving a garrison in
Rome, had to betake himself once more to that desultory warfare,
flitting round the coast from one naval fortress to another, in which
the earlier years of his second command had been passed; and at length,
early in 549, only two years after his re-occupation of Rome, he
obtained as a great favour, through the intercession of Antonina,
permission to resign his command and return to Constantinople. It was on
this occasion that Procopius passed that harsh judgment as to the
inglorious character of these later operations of his in Italy, which
was quoted on a previous page.[155]

[Footnote 155: See page 349.]

I will briefly summarise the subsequent events in the life of the old
hero:

Once more, ten years after the retu