he audacious Barbarian granted them
_three_, in the just confidence that famine would anticipate the term
of their capitulation. After the reduction of Naples and Cumae, the
provinces of Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, submitted to the king of
the Goths. Totila led his army to the gates of Rome, pitched his camp
at Tibur, or Tivoli, within twenty miles of the capital, and calmly
exhorted the senate and people to compare the tyranny of the Greeks with
the blessings of the Gothic reign.

The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the revolution
which three years' experience had produced in the sentiments of the
Italians. At the command, or at least in the name, of a Catholic
emperor, the pope, their spiritual father, had been torn from the Roman
church, and either starved or murdered on a desolate island. The virtues
of Belisarius were replaced by the various or uniform vices of eleven
chiefs, at Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, &c., who abused
their authority for the indulgence of lust or avarice. The improvement
of the revenue was committed to Alexander, a subtle scribe, long
practised in the fraud and oppression of the Byzantine schools,
and whose name of _Psalliction_, the _scissors_, was drawn from the
dexterous artifice with which he reduced the size without defacing the
figure, of the gold coin. Instead of expecting the restoration of peace
and industry, he imposed a heavy assessment on the fortunes of the
Italians. Yet his present or future demands were less odious than a
prosecution of arbitrary rigor against the persons and property of all
those who, under the Gothic kings, had been concerned in the receipt and
expenditure of the public money. The subjects of Justinian, who escaped
these partial vexations, were oppressed by the irregular maintenance
of the soldiers, whom Alexander defrauded and despised; and their hasty
sallies in quest of wealth, or subsistence, provoked the inhabitants of
the country to await or implore their deliverance from the virtues of
a Barbarian. Totila was chaste and temperate; and none were deceived,
either friends or enemies, who depended on his faith or his clemency. To
the husbandmen of Italy the Gothic king issued a welcome proclamation,
enjoining them to pursue their important labors, and to rest assured,
that, on the payment of the ordinary taxes, they should be defended by
his valor and discipline from the injuries of war. The strong towns he
successively at