ose personal qualities--the large
courtesy, the ready kindliness, the frequent laugh--made intimate
appeal to one of his disposition. He stayed in the camp before Ravenna
until the city surrendered, and no one listened with more ardent
approval to the suggestion which began as a whisper between Italians
and Goths that Belisarius should accept the purple of the Western
Empire. This, to be sure, would have been treachery, but treachery
against Justinian seemed a small thing to Basil, and a thing of no
moment at all when one thought of Rome as once more an Imperial city,
and Italy with such a ruler as the laurelled Patricius. Treachery the
general did commit, but not against Byzantium. Having made pretence of
accepting the crown which the Goths offered him, he entered into
Ravenna, took possession in Justinian's name, and presently sailed for
the East, carrying with him the King Vitiges and his wife Matasuntha,
grand-daughter of Theodoric. It was a bitter disappointment to Basil,
who had imagined for himself a brilliant career under the auspices of
the new Roman Emperor, and who now saw himself merely a conquered
Italian, set under the authority of Byzantine governors. He had no
temptation to remain in the North, for Cassiodorus was no longer here,
having withdrawn a twelvemonth ago to his own country by the Ionian
Sea, and there entered the monastery founded by himself; at Ravenna
ruled the logothete Alexandros, soon to win a surname from his
cleverness in coin-clipping. So Basil journeyed to Rome, where his
kinsfolk met him with news of deaths and miseries. The city was but
raising her head after the long agony of the Gothic siege. He entered
his silent home on the Caelian, and began a life of dispirited idleness.

Vast was the change produced in the Roman's daily existence by the
destruction of the aqueducts. The Thermae being henceforth unsupplied
with water, those magnificent resorts of every class of citizen lost
their attraction, and soon ceased to be frequented; for all the Roman's
exercises and amusements were associated with the practice of luxurious
bathing, and without that refreshment the gymnasium, the tennis-court,
the lounge, no longer charmed as before. Rome became dependent upon
wells and the Tiber, wretched resource compared with the never-failing
and abundant streams which once poured through every region of the city
and threw up fountains in all but every street. Belisarius, as soon as
the Goths retrea