nted by
nature in the human breast--even mothers are said to have tasted the
flesh of their slaughtered infants!

Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses or in
the streets for want of sustenance; and as the public sepulchres without
the walls were in the power of the enemy, the stench which arose from so
many putrid and unburied carcasses infected the air; and the miseries of
famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential
disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual relief, which were
repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna, supported for some
time the fainting resolution of the Romans, till at length the despair
of any human aid tempted them to accept the offers of a preternatural
deliverance. Pompeianus, prefect of the city, had been persuaded, by the
art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners, that, by the mysterious force
of spells and sacrifices, they could extract the lightning from the
clouds, and point those celestial fires against the camp of the
Barbarians. The important secret was communicated to Innocent, the
Bishop of Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused, perhaps with
foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic to the rigid
severity of the Christian worship. But when the question was agitated in
the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential condition, that those
sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by the authority, and in
the presence, of the magistrates, the majority of that respectable
assembly, apprehensive either of the divine or of the Imperial
displeasure, refused to join in an act which appeared almost equivalent
to the public restoration of paganism.

The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the King of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors to
negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to John, the first tribune of the
notaries, who was peculiarly qualified by his dexterity in business, as
well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were
introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty
style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved
to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if