with his left hand, and stabs at them with his right. But his time
is come. As he shifts his shield for a moment his chest is exposed,
and a javelin is through him. And so ends the last hero of the East
Goths. They put his head upon a pole, and carry it round the lines
to frighten the Goths. The Goths are long past frightening.

All day long, and all the next day, did the Germans fight on, Burgund
and Gepid against Goth, neither giving nor taking quarter, each man
dying where he stood, till human strength could bear up no longer,
while Narses sat by, like an ugly Troll as he was, smiling to see the
Teuton slay the Teuton, for the sake of their common enemy. Then the
Goths sent down to Narses. They were fighting against God. They
would give in, and go their ways peaceably, and live with some other
Teuton nations after their own laws. They had had enough of Italy,
poor fellows, and of the Nibelungen hoard. Only Narses, that they
might buy food on the journey back, must let them have their money,
which he had taken in various towns of Italy.

Narses agreed. There was no use fighting more with desperate men.
They should go in peace. And he kept his faith with them. Perhaps
he dared not break it. He let them go, like a wounded lion crawling
away from the hunter, up through Italy, and over the Po, to vanish.
They and their name became absorbed in other nations, and history
knows the East Goths no more.

So perished, by their own sins, a noble nation; and in perishing,
destroyed utterly the Roman people. After war and famine followed as
usual dreadful pestilence, and Italy lay waste for years. Henceforth
the Italian population was not Roman, but a mixture of all races,
with a most powerful, but an entirely new type of character. Rome