Vitiges then abandoned Rome, but it seems not altogether. What he may be supposed to have imagined Belisarius doing to his disadvantage, that he himself did. He left in Rome a garrison of four thousand men under a veteran general Leudaris, while he himself with the Gothic army fell back upon Ravenna. No sooner was he gone than the surrender of the City was offered to Belisarius by pope Silverius who spoke for the citizens and the Roman people. This was the reality of the situation. Then indeed an almost incredible blunder was committed, but not by Vitiges. The four thousand Goths whom he had left to hold the City, and at least to delay and waste the imperialists, marched out of Rome along the Flaminian Way as Belisarius entered from the south by the Via Latina. Leudaris alone refused to quit this post. He was taken prisoner, and sent with the keys of the Eternal City to Justinian.
Belisarius established himself upon the Pincian Hill, and his first act after his occupation of the City is significant both of his profound knowledge of the barbarians and of the immutable characteristics of a Latin people.
It is possible that the Romans, seeing the fall of Palermo and Naples and the occupation of Rome itself obtained so easily, believed that the Goths were finally disposed of. But Belisarius' vast experience of the character of the barbarians taught him otherwise. He immediately began to provision Rome from Sicily as fast as he could, and he at once undertook the fortification of the City, the repair of the Aurelian Wall. In these acts of Belisarius two things become evident. We see that he expected the return of the Goths, and we are made aware of the fact that they had neglected to fortify the City.
It must be well seized by the reader, that the Gothic armies very greatly outnumbered the imperial troops, who were but a small expedition of not more than eight thousand men face to face with an immense horde of barbarians. The great advantage of the imperialists was that they were fighting in a friendly country, and they had too certain superiorities of armament which civilisation may always depend upon having at its command as against barbarians. Nevertheless, Belisarius knew that his end would be more securely won if he could wear down the barbarians, always impatient of so slow a business as a siege, from behind fortifications. He expected the barbarians, unstable in judgment and impatient of any but the simplest strategy and tactics, to swarm again and again about the City, and he was right: what he expected came to pass.
On the other hand, we see in the neglect on the part of the Goths of all fortification of the City a neglect instantly repaired by Belisarius, a characteristic persistent and perhaps ineradicable in the Teutonic mind from the days of Tacitus to our own time. The Romans had always asserted, and those nations to-day who are of their tradition still assert, that the spade is the indispensable weapon of the soldier. But the barbarians and those nations to-day who are of their tradition, while they have not been so foolish as to refuse the spade altogether, have always fortified reluctantly. You see these two characteristics at work to-day in the opposite methods of the French and the Germans, just as you see them at work in the sixth century when Belisarius rebuilt the fortifications of the City which the Goths had neglected.
And if we have praised Vitiges for his retreat upon Ravenna, how much more must we praise Belisarius for the fortification of Rome. For if the one had for its result the prolongation of the war for some four years, the other determined what the end of that war should be.
Let us once more consider the military situation. It is evident that Vitiges evacuated Rome because he was afraid of losing Ravenna, his base, by an outflanking movement on the part of Belisarius and perhaps by a new attack from Dalmatia.[1]
[Footnote 1: My theory of the strategy of Vitiges and of his purpose is perhaps unorthodox; the orthodox theory being that he was a fool and the abandonment of Rome a mere blunder. But my theory would seem to be accurate enough, for Vitiges's first act from Ravenna was to despatch an army into Dalmatia.]
In leaving a garrison within the City of some four thousand men—say half as many as the whole imperialist army—he at least hoped to delay the enemy till he had secured himself in the north and to waste him. I do not think he expected to hold the city for any length of time, for the whole country was spiritually with the enemy.
What he hoped to gain by his retreat was, however, not merely the security of the north. He hoped also to lure Belisarius thither after him where, in a country less wholly Latin and imperialist, he would have a better chance of annihilating him by mere numbers once and for all. To this supreme hope and expectation of the Goth's, the refortification of Rome by Belisarius finally put an end. It was a countermove worthy of such a master and entirely in keeping with the Roman tradition.