The household comprised his unwedded sister Petronilla, a lady in
middle age, his nephew Basil, and another kinsman, Decius, a student
and an invalid; together with a physician, certain freedmen who
rendered services of trust, a eunuch at the Command of Petronilla,
and the usual body of male and female slaves. Some score of
glebe-bound peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's
behoof. Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman
nobility, many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the
Anicii still controlled large means; and the disposal of these
possessions at his death was matter of interest to many persons--
not least to the clergy of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister
a piously tenacious advocate. Children had been born to Maximus, but
the only son who reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence
when Vitiges was camped about the City. There survived one daughter,
Aurelia. Her the father had not seen for years; her he longed to see
and to pardon ere he died. For Aurelia, widowed of her first husband
in early youth, had used her liberty to love and wed a flaxen-haired
barbarian, a lord of the Goths; and, worse still, had renounced the
Catholic faith for the religion of the Gothic people, that heresy of
Arianism condemned and abhorred by Rome. In Consequence she became
an outcast from her kith and kin. Her husband commanded in the city
of Cumae, hard by Neapolis. When this stronghold fell before the
advance of Belisarius, the Goth escaped, soon after to die in
battle; Aurelia, a captive of the Conquerors, remained at Cumae, and
still was living there, though no longer under restraint. Because of
its strength, this ancient city became the retreat of many ladies
who fled from Rome before the hardships and perils of the siege;
from them the proud and unhappy woman. ever held apart, yet she
refused to quit the town when she would have been permitted to do
so. From his terrace above the Surrentine shore, Maximus gazed