lance; but armed with sword, shield, and heavy short-handled double-
edged francisc, or battle-axe. At the bridge over the Ticinus they
(nominal Catholics) sacrificed Gothic women and children with horrid
rites, fought alike Goths and Romans, lost a third of their army by
dysentery, and went home again.

At last, after more horrors, Vitigis and his Goths were driven into
Ravenna. Justinian treated for peace; and then followed a strange
peripeteia, which we have, happily, from an eye-witness, Procopius
himself. The Roman generals outside confessed their chance of
success hopeless. The Goths inside, tired of the slow Vitigis, send
out to the great Belisarius, Will he be their king? King over them
there in Italy? He promised, meaning to break his promise; and to
the astonishment and delight of the Romans, the simple and honest
barbarians opened the gates of Ravenna, and let in him and his
Romans, to find themselves betrayed and enslaved. 'When I saw our
troops march in,' says Procopius, 'I felt it was God's doing, so to
turn their minds. The Goths,' he says, 'were far superior in numbers
and in strength; and their women, who had fancied these Romans to be
mighty men of valour, spit in the faces of their huge husbands, and
pointing to the little Romans, reproached them with having
surrendered to such things as that.' But the folly was committed.
Belisarius carried them away captive to Constantinople, and so ended
the first act of the Gothic war.

In the moment of victory the envy of the Byzantine court undid all
that it had done. Belisarius returned with his captives to Rome, not
for a triumph, but for a disgrace; and Italy was left open to the
Goths, if they had men and heart to rise once more.