lost the _élite_ of their cavalry. On the eighteenth day of the siege, at sunrise, the Goths, led on by Vitiges, marched towards the gate Salaria. At the sight of their machines, Belisarius broke into a loud laugh, whilst the inhabitants were frozen with fear. The Goths had reached the bank of the ditch, when the Roman general, seizing a bow, took aim at a Gothic commander covered with a cuirass, and pierced him quite through the neck. This act was highly applauded by his troops, whose triumph was doubled by a second aim as fortunate as the first. Belisarius then commanded his soldiers to make a general discharge at the oxen which drew the machines. In an instant they were covered and transpierced with an iron shower. The astonished and discomfited Goths were forced to terminate their attack. Although the attempts of Vitiges seemed generally to fail, he was on the point of taking Rome, to the north of the mole or tomb of Adrian, since called the castle of St. Angelo. It was necessary for the Goths to possess themselves of this place, to cross the Tiber. In spite of the arrows of the Romans, they had applied their ladders and begun to ascend, when the defenders of the mole bethought themselves of breaking off the numerous marble statues with which this monument was ornamented, and rolled the fragments upon the heads of the besiegers, who, beaten from their ladders by these enormous masses, were constrained to abandon their enterprise. The next day, Belisarius dismissed all useless mouths from the city; he enrolled a great number of artisans; he changed the locks and bolts of the city gates twice a month; and caused instruments to be played upon the walls during the night. A Goth, remarkable for his height and famous for his exploits, covered with his cuirass, and with his helmet on his head, advanced from the ranks opposite the gate Salaria, and setting his back against a tree, kept up a continuous discharge of arrows at the battlements. An immense javelin, launched from a ballist, pierced him through cuirass, body and all, and penetrating half its length into the tree, nailed this redoubtable warrior to it. Although we are arrived at a well-authenticated period of history, we must confess the following account trenches upon the marvellous: but, as we know truth is sometimes more wonderful than fiction, we do not hesitate to repeat it. A Massagete horseman named Chorsamantes, one of Belisarius’s guards, accompanied by a few Romans, was pursuing a body of sixty horse on the plains of Nero. His companions having turned rein, in order not to approach too near to the enemy’s camp, he continued the pursuit alone. The Goths, seeing him thus deserted, turned round upon him: he killed the boldest of them, charged the others, and put them to flight. Chorsamantes pursued them to their intrenchments, and, more fortunate than prudent, he regained Rome in safety, and was received with loud acclamations. Some time after,