The Isaurians, after a bloody fight, had issued through a breach in the outer wall (which had been broken outwards by the Goths who were inside). The Prefect saw the last of the barbarians fly; then his eyes closed once more. "Cethegus!" cried the friend who held him in his arms, "Belisarius is dying; and you, you too are lost!" Cethegus recognised the voice of Procopius. "I do not know," he said with a last effort, "but Rome--Rome is saved!" And his senses completely forsook him. CHAPTER XIII. After the terrible exertion of strength in the general attack and its repulse, which had begun with the dawn of day, and had only ended at its close, a long pause of exhaustion ensued on the part of both Goths and Romans. The three commanders, Belisarius, Cethegus, and Witichis, lay for weeks recovering from their wounds. But the actual armistice was more the effect of the deep discouragement and oppression which had come over the Gothic army when, after striving for victory to the uttermost, it had been wrested from them at the moment of seeming success. All day they had done their best; their heroes had outvied each other in deeds of valour; and yet both their plans, that against Belisarius and that against the city, were wrecked in the consummation. And although King Witichis, with his constant mind, did not share in the depression of his troops, he all the more clearly discerned that, after that bloody day, he would be obliged to change the whole plan of the siege. The loss of the Goths was enormous; Procopius valued it at thirty thousand dead and more than as many wounded. On every side of the city they had exposed themselves, with utter contempt of death, to the projectiles of the besieged, and had fallen by thousands at the Pancratian Gate and before the Mausoleum of Hadrian. And as, on the sixty-eight earlier attacks, the besiegers had always suffered much more than the besieged, sheltered as were these last behind walls and towers, the great army which, a few months before, Witichis had led against the Eternal City had been fearfully reduced. Besides all this, hunger and pestilence had raged in their tents for a considerable period. In consequence of this discouragement and the decimation of his troops, Witichis was obliged to renounce the idea of taking the city by storm, and his last hope--he did not conceal from himself its weakness--lay in the possibility that famine would force the enemy to capitulate. The country round Rome was completely exhausted, and all seemed now to depend upon which party would be longest able to bear privation, or which could first procure provisions from a distance. The Goths felt severely the loss of their fleet, which had been damaged on the coast of Dalmatia. The first to recover from his wounds was the Prefect.