as exhibited, at this stage of the war, on either side. The Imperial
troops scattered about Italy, ill-paid, and often starving mercenaries
from a score of Oriental countries, saw no one ready to lead them to
battle, and the one Byzantine general capable of commanding called
vainly for an army. Wearied by marchings and counter-marchings, the
Gothic warriors were more disposed to rest awhile after their easy
conquests than to make a vigorous effort for the capture of Rome.
Totila himself, heroic redeemer of his nation, turned anxious glances
towards Ravenna, hoping, rather than resolving, to hold his state upon
the Palatine before Belisarius could advance against him. He felt the
fatigue of those about him, and it was doubtless under the stress of
such a situation, bearing himself the whole burden of the war, that he
had ordered, or permitted, barbarous revenge upon the city of Tibur.
For this reason he would not, even now, centre all his attention upon
the great siege; he knew what a long, dispiriting business it was
likely to be, and feared to fall into that comparative idleness. Soon
after the incident of the Sicilian corn-ship, he was once more
commanding in the north, where a few cities yet held out against him.
Dreadful stories were told concerning the siege of Placentia, whose
inhabitants were said to have eaten the bodies of their dead ere they
yielded to the Goth. So stern a spirit of resistance was found only in
places where religious zeal and national sentiment both existed in
their utmost vigour, and Totila well knew that, of these two forces
ever threatening to make his conquests vain, it was from religion that
he had most to fear. In vain was the history of Gothic tolerance known
throughout Italy; it created no corresponding virtue in the bosom of
Catholicism; the barbaric origin of the Goths might be forgotten or
forgiven, their heresy--never.

Totila, whose qualities of heart and mind would have made him, could he
but have ruled in peace, a worthy successor of the great Theodoric, had
reflected much on this question of the hostile creeds; he had talked of
it with ministers of his own faith and with those of the orthodox
church; and it was on this account that he had sought an interview with
the far-famed monk of Casinum. Understanding the futility of any hope
that the Italians might be won to Arianism, and having sufficient
largeness of intellect to perceive how idle was a debate concerning the
'substance