cruel and unjust were never finally successful in war, for as was a man’s life, such was his fortune in battle. The officers caught their sovereign’s meaning and withdrew, and the criminal was duly executed. In 542, the year of the plague, Justinian had been able to do little for Italy, but in that which followed, when he heard that Naples had fallen, he determined to send the newly-pardoned Belisarius back to the scene of his former glories. Denied the services of his own body-guard the great general recruited 4000 raw troops in Thrace, and made ready to return. Baduila meanwhile was besieging Otranto, and clearing Apulia of the Imperialists. In the next year the Gothic king and the Roman general came for the first time into contact; contrary to expectation it was not Belisarius who had the better of the struggle: broken in spirit, badly served by his raw recruits, and by the demoralised army of Italy, and unaided by Justinian, who was straining every nerve to keep up the Persian War, he accomplished little or nothing. [Sidenote: Campaign of Belisarius and Baduila.] Based on the impregnable fortress of Ravenna he was able to seize Pesaro, and to relieve the garrisons of Osimo and of Otranto, but that was all. Baduila ravaged Italy unmolested, and began to make preparations for the siege of Rome: if he was to be checked—as Belisarius wrote to his master—more men and money to pay them were urgently needed. Justinian could not, or would not, send either men or money in adequate quantity, and Baduila was able to invest Rome. Unlike Witiges, he succeeded in barring all the roads, and in blocking the Tiber by a boom of spars. Famine was soon within the walls, but the Goths made no attempt at a storm, leaving hunger to do its work. Bessas, the governor of Rome, sought for aid from all sides, and corn ships were sent him from Sicily, but Baduila seized them all as they were tacking up the Tiber channel. Then Belisarius came round to Portus, at the mouth of the river, with all the men he could muster, a very few thousands, and endeavoured to force his way to Rome by breaking Baduila’s boom, and bringing his lighter war-vessels up the Tiber. He left his wife, his stores, and his reserves at Portus, sailed up the river, and succeeded, after a hot engagement, in burning the towers which guarded the boom. But, in the moment of success, news came to him that the Goths were attacking Portus in his rear, and that his wife and camp were in danger. He turned back, found that the fighting at Portus was only an insignificant skirmish brought on by the rashness of the officer in command there, and so missed his chance of forcing the boom. Disappointment, or the malarial fever of the marshy Tiber-mouth, laid him on a bed of sickness next day, and, before he was recovered, Rome had fallen. Some of the famished garrison threw open the Asinarian Gate at midnight, and admitted the Goths, after the siege had lasted thirteen months (545-546).