Peter the apostle.

The battlements or bastions were shaped in sharp angles a ditch, broad
and deep, protected the foot of the rampart; and the archers on the
rampart were assisted by military engines; the _balista_, a powerful
cross-bow, which darted short but massy arrows; the _onagri_, or wild
asses, which, on the principle of a sling, threw stones and bullets of
an enormous size. A chain was drawn across the Tyber; the arches of the
aqueducts were made impervious, and the mole or sepulchre of Hadrian was
converted, for the first time, to the uses of a citadel. That venerable
structure, which contained the ashes of the Antonines, was a circular
turret rising from a quadrangular basis; it was covered with the white
marble of Paros, and decorated by the statues of gods and heroes;
and the lover of the arts must read with a sigh, that the works of
Praxiteles or Lysippus were torn from their lofty pedestals, and hurled
into the ditch on the heads of the besiegers. To each of his lieutenants
Belisarius assigned the defence of a gate, with the wise and peremptory
instruction, that, whatever might be the alarm, they should steadily
adhere to their respective posts, and trust their general for the safety
of Rome. The formidable host of the Goths was insufficient to embrace
the ample measure of the city, of the fourteen gates, seven only were
invested from the Prnestine to the Flaminian way; and Vitiges divided
his troops into six camps, each of which was fortified with a ditch
and rampart. On the Tuscan side of the river, a seventh encampment was
formed in the field or circus of the Vatican, for the important purpose
of commanding the Milvian bridge and the course of the Tyber; but they
approached with devotion the adjacent church of St. Peter; and the
threshold of the holy apostles was respected during the siege by a
Christian enemy. In the ages of victory, as often as the senate decreed
some distant conquest, the consul denounced hostilities, by unbarring,
in solemn pomp, the gates of the temple of Janus. Domestic war now
rendered the admonition superfluous, and the ceremony was superseded by
the establishment of a new religion. But the brazen temple of Janus was
left standing in the forum; of a size sufficient only to contain the
statue of the god, five cubits in height, of a human form, but with two
faces directed to the east and west. The double gates were likewise
of brass; and a fruitless effort to turn them on their r