History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
should no longer be trampled by the savages of the North; and, without
reflecting, that Italy must sink into a province of Constantinople, they
fondly hailed the restoration of a Roman emperor as a new Êra of freedom
and prosperity. The deputies of the pope and clergy, of the senate and
people, invited the lieutenant of Justinian to accept their voluntary
allegiance, and to enter the city, whose gates would be thrown open for
his reception. As soon as Belisarius had fortified his new conquests,
Naples and CumÊ, he advanced about twenty miles to the banks of the
Vulturnus, contemplated the decayed grandeur of Capua, and halted at the
separation of the Latin and Appian ways. The work of the censor, after
the incessant use of nine centuries, still preserved its primÊval
beauty, and not a flaw could be discovered in the large polished stones,
of which that solid, though narrow road, was so firmly compacted.
Belisarius, however, preferred the Latin way, which, at a distance from
the sea and the marshes, skirted in a space of one hundred and twenty
miles along the foot of the mountains. His enemies had disappeared: when
he made his entrance through the Asinarian gate, the garrison departed
without molestation along the Flaminian way; and the city, after
sixty years' servitude, was delivered from the yoke of the Barbarians.
Leuderis alone, from a motive of pride or discontent, refused to
accompany the fugitives; and the Gothic chief, himself a trophy of the
victory, was sent with the keys of Rome to the throne of the emperor
Justinian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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