as against barbarians. Nevertheless,
Belisarius knew that his end would be more securely won if he could
wear down the barbarians, always impatient of so slow a business as a
siege, from behind fortifications. He expected the barbarians,
unstable in judgment and impatient of any but the simplest strategy
and tactics, to swarm again and again about the City, and he was
right: what he expected came to pass.

On the other hand, we see in the neglect on the part of the Goths of
all fortification of the City a neglect instantly repaired by
Belisarius, a characteristic persistent and perhaps ineradicable in
the Teutonic mind from the days of Tacitus to our own time. The Romans
had always asserted, and those nations to-day who are of their
tradition still assert, that the spade is the indispensable weapon of
the soldier. But the barbarians and those nations to-day who are of
their tradition, while they have not been so foolish as to refuse the
spade altogether, have always fortified reluctantly. You see these two
characteristics at work to-day in the opposite methods of the French
and the Germans, just as you see them at work in the sixth century
when Belisarius rebuilt the fortifications of the City which the Goths
had neglected.

And if we have praised Vitiges for his retreat upon Ravenna, how much
more must we praise Belisarius for the fortification of Rome. For if
the one had for its result the prolongation of the war for some four
years, the other determined what the end of that war should be.

Let us once more consider the military situation. It is evident that
Vitiges evacuated Rome because he was afraid of losing Ravenna, his
base, by an outflanking movement on the part of Belisarius and perhaps
by a new attack from Dalmatia.[1]

[Footnote 1: My theory of the strategy of Vitiges and of his purpose
is perhaps unorthodox; the orthodox theory being that he was a fool
and the abandonment of Rome a mere blunder. But my theory would seem
to be accurate enough, for Vitiges's first act from Ravenna was to
despatch an army into Dalmatia.]

In leaving a garrison within the City of some four thousand men--say
half as many as the whole imperialist army--he at least hoped to delay
the enemy till he had secured himself in the north and to waste him. I
do not think he expected to hold the city for any length of time, for
the whole country was spiritually with the enemy.

What he hoped to gain by his retreat was, however, not m