So hard was the frost that the garment which the matron's persevering
toil had woven had to be broken before a man might fit it to his body.
Food for thy marching armies was forced from the grasp of the hostile
nations around, or procured by the cunning of the hunter."[1] It has
been supposed by Mr. Hodgkin that not less than 40,000 fighting men
and some 200,000 souls in all thus entered Italy. To us it might seem
that no such number of people could have lived without commissariat
during that tremendous march of seven hundred miles through some of
the poorest land of Europe in the depth of winter. However that may
be, Theodoric after many an encounter with barbarians wilder than his
own descended from the Julian Alps into Venetia in August 489, after a
march of not less than ten months.

[Footnote 1: Ennodius, _Panegyricus_, p. 173. Trs. by Hodgkin, _op.
cit_. iii. 179-80.]

Odoacer was waiting for him. He met him near the site of the old
fortress of Aquileia, which Attila had annihilated, that once held the
passage of the Sontius (Isonzo). He was defeated and all Venetia fell
into the hands of the Ostrogoth. Odoacer retreated to Verona, that red
fortress on the Adige; once more and more certainly he was beaten. He
retreated to Ravenna,[2] while Theodoric advanced to Milan, to Milan
which now led nowhere.

[Footnote 2: "Et Ravennam cum exercitu fugiens pervenit." Anon.
Valesii, 50.]

After Verona, Theodoric had received the submission of a part of
Odoacer's army under Tufa. When he had possessed himself of Milan, he
sent these renegades and certain nobles with their men from his own