But no word was said of restoring a western emperor. Rome retained only an ideal precedence; Constantinople was the seat of empire. Rome received a permanent garrison, and had to share with Ravenna, where the heads of the Italian government soon permanently resided. Justinian's constitution found existing the mere shadow of a senate. The prefect of the city governed at Rome. There is mention made of a salary given to professors of Grammar and Rhetoric,[150] to physicians and lawyers; but it is doubtful whether this ever came into effect. The Gothic war[151] seems to have destroyed the great public libraries of Rome, the Palatine and Ulpian, as well as the private libraries of princely palaces, such as Boethius and Symmachus possessed. And in all Italy the war of extermination between Goths and Greeks swallowed up the costly treasures of ancient literature, save such remnant as the Benedictine monasteries were able to collect and preserve.[152] No building of Justinian's in Rome is known. All his work of this kind was given to Ravenna. From this time forth every new building in Rome is due to the Popes. Small reason had the Popes to rejoice that the rule of an orthodox emperor had followed at Rome that of an Arian king. Three months after the death of Vigilius at Syracuse Justinian caused the deacon Pelagius to be elected: he had difficulty in obtaining his recognition until he had cleared himself by oath in St. Peter's of an accusation that he had hastened his predecessor's death. The confirmation of the Pope's election remained with the emperor. This permanent fetter came upon the Popes from the interference of Odoacer the Herule in 484. After Justinian's death, the Romans sent an embassy to his successor complaining that their lot had been more endurable under the dominion of barbarians than under the Greeks. When Narses,[153] re-entering Rome, celebrated a triple triumph over the expulsion of barbarians from Italy, the reunion of the empire, and the Church's victory over the Arians, a contemporary historian writes that the mind of man had not power enough to conceive so many reverses of fortune, such destruction of cities, such a flight of men, such a murdering of peoples, much less to describe them in words. Italy was strewn with ruins and dead bodies from the Alps to Tarentum. Famine and pestilence, following on the steps of war, had reduced whole districts to desolation. Procopius compares the reckoning of losses to that of reckoning the sands of the sea. A sober estimate computes that one-third of the population perished, and the ancient form of life in Rome and in all Italy was extinct for ever. But before we make an estimate of Justinian's whole action and character and their result, a subject on which we have scarcely touched has to be carefully weighed.