"He may enter. First Rome; then the rest! Follow me!"
And Cethegus galloped off the same way that he had come.
Only a few mounted men could keep up with him; his foot-soldiers and Isaurians followed at a run.
CHAPTER XII.
At the same time a pause ensued before the Tiburtinian Gate.
A messenger had recalled the Gothic horsemen from the useless fight.
They were to send all the men they could dispose of as fast as possible round the city to the Aurelian Gate, through which their comrades had just entered the city; there the greatest available force was necessary.
The horsemen, turning to the left, galloped towards the gate which had now become the centre of the struggle; but their own foot-soldiers, storming the five gates which lay between--the Porta Clausa, the Nomentanian, Salarian, Pincian, and Flaminian Gates--blocked their progress so long, that they arrived too late for the result of the attack upon the Mausoleum.
We recollect the position of this favourite resort of the Prefect. Opposite the Vatican Hill, at about a stone's throw from the Aurelian Gate, with which it was connected by side walls, and protected everywhere, except on the south, where ran the river, by new fortifications, towered the "Moles Hadriani," an immense round tower of the firmest masonry.
A sort of court surrounded the principal building. On the south, before the first and outer wall of defence, flowed the Tiber. The ramparts of this outer wall, and the court and battlements of the inner wall, were usually occupied by the Isaurians, whom, in an evil hour, the Prefect had withdrawn in order to carry out his plot against Belisarius.