The Milan of Ambrose and Augustine still belonged in outward aspect to the imperial past. But a general decay, hastened by exorbitant taxation and bad administration, was visible at this time throughout North Italy, where many of the chief towns were, in Ambrose’s own words, _Corpses of half-ruined cities_. At the opening of the fifth century the simulacrum of Empire was attacked by the Goths under Alaric (402), and half a century later (450) Attila, _Flagellum Dei_, passed with his Huns over the face of Italy, uprooting the useless remains of the ancient world, as a plough furrows a field for the new sowing. Milan came within his course, but how deep and extensive was the ruin wrought by him there we do not know. His was but the first operation in God’s tilling of that rank soil for the new life it was to bear. In 538 the city suffered a second and apparently more complete destruction, during the war of Narses and Belisarius for the recovery of Italy from the Ostrogothic dynasty established by Theodoric. Milan revolted from the Gothic King Vitige and allied herself with the Eastern generals. Vitige despatched a portion of his army, swelled by a host of Burgundians from the mountains, ancestors, probably, of those Swiss who were to plague the Milanese in later history. The city was closely invested, and after some months, deceived in the expectation of succour from Belisarius, she fell a victim to the revenge of the Goths. The historian Procopius describes the three hundred thousand slain, the women sold as slaves, the habitations razed to the ground, and his statement, in spite of obvious exaggeration, is an indication of the awful havoc and desolation inflicted upon the still soft, corrupt and luxurious city.