las and the
farms, collecting great stores of grain and fruit, driving off horses
and cattle, and generally visiting on the hapless Sicilians the
treachery which in his view they had shown to the Ostrogothic dynasty by
the eagerness with which, fifteen years before, they had welcomed the
arms of Belisarius.

But at the end of a long and exhausting war it is often seen that
victory rests with that power which has enough reserve force left to
make one final effort, even though that effort in the earlier years of
the war might not have been deemed a great one. So was it now with
Justinian's conquest of Italy. Though he himself was utterly weary of
the Sisyphean labour, he would not surrender a shred of his theoretical
claims, nor would he even condescend to admit to an audience the
ambassadors of Totila, who came to plead for peace and alliance between
the two hostile powers.

In his perplexity as to the further conduct of the war he offered the
command to his Grand Chamberlain Narses, who eagerly accepted it. The
choice was indeed a strange one. Narses, an Armenian by birth, brought
as an eunuch to Constantinople, and dedicated to the service of the
palace, had grown grey in that service, and was now seventy-four years
of age. But he was of "Illustrious" rank, he shared the most secret
counsels of the Emperor, he was able freely to unloose the purse-strings
which had been so parsimoniously closed to Belisarius, and he had set
his whole heart on succeeding where Belisarius had failed. Moreover, he
was himself both wealthy and generous, and he brought with him a huge
and motley host of barbarians, Huns, Lombards, Gepids, Herulians, all
eager to serve under the free-handed Chamberlain, and to be enriched by
him with the spoil of Italy.

In the spring of 552, the Eunuch-general, with this strange multitude
calling itself a Roman army, marched round the head of the Adriatic Gulf
and entered the impregnable seat of Empire, Ravenna. By adroit strategy
he evaded the Gothic generals who had been ordered to arrest his
progress in North-eastern Italy and--probably by about midsummer--he had
reached the point a little south-west of Ancona, where the Flaminian
Way, the great northern road from Rome, crosses the Apennines. Here on
the crest of the mountains[157] Narses encamped, and here Totila met
him, eager for the fight which was to decide the future dominion of
Italy.

[Footnote 157: There is some little difference of opinion