Chap, xli] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 347 was meditated on the walls beyond the Tiber in a place which was not fortified with towers ; and the Barbarians advanced, with torches and scaling-ladders, to the assault of the Pincian gate. But every attempt was defeated by the intrepid vigilance of Belisarius and his band of veterans, who, in the most perilous moments, did not regret the absence of their companions ; and the Goths, alike destitute of hope and subsistence, clamorously urged their departure, before the truce should expire, and the Eoman cavalry should again be united. One year and nine days after the commencement of the siege, an army, so lately strong and triumphant, burnt their tents, and tumultuously repassed the Milvian bridge. They repassed not with impunity : their thronging multitudes, oppressed in a narrow passage, were driven headlong into the Tiber, by their own fears and the pur- suit of the enemy ; and the Koman general, sallying from the Pincian gate, inflicted a severe and disgraceful wound on their retreat. The slow length of a sickly and desponding host was heavily dragged along the Flaminian way ; from whence the Barbarians were sometimes compelled to deviate, lest they should encounter the hostile garrisons that guarded the high road to Rimini and Ravenna. Yet so powerful was this flying army that Vitiges spared ten thousand men for the defence of the cities which he was most solicitous to preserve, and detached his nephew Uraias, with an adequate force, for the chastisement of rebellious Milan. At the head of his principal army, he be- sieged Rimini, only thirty-three miles distant from the Gothic capital. A feeble rampart and a shallow ditch were maintained by the skill and valour of John the Sanguinary, who shared the danger and fatigue of the meanest soldier, and emulated, on a theatre less illustrious, the military virtues of his great com- mander. The towers and battering engines of the Barbarians lose Rimini were rendered useless ; their attacks were repulsed ; and the tedious blockade, which reduced the garrison to the last ex- tremity of hunger, afforded time for the union and march of the Roman forces. A fleet, which had surprised Ancona, sailed along the coast of the Hadriatic, to the relief of the besieged on the east bank, opposite the Ponte San Angelo. It does not appear however that the guards of this gate were to be drugged, but the guards who were stationed to defend a weak part of the wall between this gate and the P. Flaminia (P. del Popolo). Proa, B. G., 2, 9.]
