Volume Iii Part 14 (1/2)

”I shall see thee again, my Gotho,” he cried, and signed a farewell.

Presently he crossed the threshold of the simple alpine cottage.

The stars had scarcely begun to pale; fresh and exhilarating the night-wind blew from the mountains around his temples.

He looked up at the silent sky.

All at once a falling star shot in a bright semicircle over his head.

It fell towards the south.

The youth raised his shepherd's staff, and cried:

”The stars beckon thither! Now beware, Cethegus the traitor!”

CHAPTER V.

On seeing the disastrous result of the battle at the bridge across the Padus, the Prefect had sent messengers back to his troops and the armed citizens of Ravenna, who were following him, to order them to return at once to the latter city. He left the defeated troops of Demetrius to their fate.

Totila had taken all the flags and field-badges of the twelve thousand, a thing which, as Procopius angrily writes, ”never before happened to the Romans.”

Cethegus himself, with his small band of trusty adherents, hastened across the aemilia to the west coast of Italy, which he reached at Populonium. There he went on board a swift s.h.i.+p of war, and, favoured by a strong breeze from the north-east (sent, as he said, by the ancient G.o.ds of Latium), sailed to the harbour of Rome--Portus.

He could never have succeeded in reaching Rome by land, for, after Totila's victory, all Tuscany and Valeria fell to the Goths; the plains unconditionally, and also such cities as were held by weak Byzantine garrisons.

Near Mucella, a day's march from Florence, the King once again vanquished a powerful army of Byzantines, under the command of eleven disunited leaders, who had gathered together the imperial garrisons of the Tuscan fortresses to block his way. The commander-in-chief of this army, Justinus, escaped to Florence with difficulty.

The King treated his numerous prisoners with such lenity, that very many Italians and imperial mercenaries deserted their flag and joined the Gothic army.

And now all the roads of Central Italy were covered by Goths and natives who hastened to join Totila on his march to Rome.

Arrived at the latter city, Cethegus had at once taken the necessary measures for its defence.

For Totila, after this new victory at Mucella, approached rapidly, scarcely detained by anything but the ovations made to him by the cities and castles on his way, which rivalled each other in opening wide their gates to the conqueror.

The few forts which still resisted were invested by small divisions of Italians, kept in order by a few chosen Gothic troops. Totila was enabled to do this without weakening his army, as, during his march to Rome, his power was increased, like a river, by the inflowing of greater or smaller parties of Goths and Italians. Not only did the Italian peasants join him by thousands, but even the mercenaries of Belisarius, who for months had received no pay, now offered their weapons to the Goths, so that a few days after the arrival of the Prefect, Totila led a very considerable army before the walls of Rome.

With loud hurrahs the troops in the Gothic encampment greeted the arrival of the brave Duke Guntharis, Wisand the bandalarius. Earl Markja, and old Grippa, whose release Totila had procured by exchanging them for the prisoners taken at the battle of the Padus.

And now the almost impossible task was laid upon Cethegus of manning effectually his grandly-designed fortifications. The whole army of Belisarius was missing--besides the greater part of his own soldiers, who were slowly sailing to the harbour of Portcus from Ravenna.

In order, even insufficiently, to defend the entire circle of the ramparts, Cethegus was obliged, not only to demand unusual and unexpected exertions from the Roman legionaries, but also to increase their numbers by despotic measures.

From boys of sixteen years of age to old men of sixty, he called ”all the sons of Romulus, Camillus, and Caesar to arms; to protect the sanctuary of their forefathers against the barbarians.”

But his appeal was scarcely read or propagated, and was responded to by very few volunteers; while he saw with mortification that the manifesto of the Gothic King, which was thrown every night over the walls in many places, was carried about and read by crowds; so that he angrily proclaimed that anyone found picking up, pasting on the walls, or reading this manifesto, or in any way facilitating its publication, would be punished by the confiscation of his property or the loss of his liberty.

In spite of this, the manifesto still spread among the citizens, and the list of volunteers remained empty.