In the first impulse of wrath Totila had threatened to level Rome with the ground. Belisarius, lying sick at Porto, had addressed to him a letter, entreating him to spare the greatest and noblest of cities. He did, however, throw down a considerable part of the walls, and when he marched to Lucania against the Greeks, took with him the chief citizens, and made the rest of the inhabitants migrate to Campania. He left a desert behind him. If we could trust the exaggerated reports of Greek historians, Rome remained forty days without inhabitants, tenanted only by beasts. So ended the second act of the Gothic tragedy. But as Vitiges had quitted Rome, so Totila deserted it, and in the spring of 547 it was entered again by Belisarius. In less than a month he restored as well as he could the part of the walls demolished, called back the inhabitants lingering in the neighbourhood, and prepared for a new attack. It was not long in coming. Scarcely had the gaps in the walls been filled up by stones piled in disorder and the trenches cleared, when the Gothic king reappeared. Thrice was his assault repulsed; then he gave up the attempt, broke down the bridges over the Anio behind him, and went to Tibur, which he took by treachery of the inhabitants, who were at strife with the Isaurian garrison. Totila massacred the citizens, the bishop, and the clergy; got possession of the upper course of the Tiber, and cut off the Romans from Tuscany. But then Belisarius was enabled to give greater care to repairing the city's defences. The state in which several gates remain to this day still show his hand. He restored Trajan's aqueduct, which fed the mills on the right bank. But in the winter of 547 the great captain was drawn away from Rome to carry on a miserable petty war with insufficient force in the south of Italy, and was finally recalled to Constantinople. So ended the third act of Rome's fall.