"If I have mortally wounded the heart," he said, "the clenched fists will open of themselves."
And so, very soon, the tents of the Byzantines were seen stretching in a wide semicircle round the royal residence of Theodoric, from the harbour-town of Classis to the canals and branches of the Padus, which, particularly to the west, formed a natural line of defence.
The old aristocratic city had indeed, even at that time, lost much of the glory in which it had rejoiced for nearly two centuries as the residence of the Roman emperors; and the last rays which the splendid reign of Theodoric had shed over it, were extinguished since the breaking out of the war.
But even thus, what a different impression must the still thickly-populated city--similar to the present Venice--have made at that period, in comparison with its aspect at present; when the interior of the city, with its silent streets, its deserted squares and its lonely basilicas, appears to the beholder no less melancholy than the plain outside the walls, where the desolate and marshy levels of the Padus stretch far away, until they are lost in the mud of the receding sea.
Where once the harbour-town of Classis was filled with active life on land and sea; where the proud triremes of the royal fleet of Ravenna rocked on the blue waters, now lie swampy meadows, in whose tall reeds and grass the wild buffalo feeds; the streets foul with stagnant water; the harbour choked with sand; the once joyous population vanished; only one gigantic tower of the time of the Goths still stands near the sole remaining Basilica, of Saint Apollonaris in Classe fuori, which, commenced by Witichis and completed by Justinian, now rises sadly out of the marshy plain, far from any human abode.
In the time of which our story speaks the strong fortress was considered impregnable, and for that reason the emperors, when their power began to decay, had chosen it for their residence.
The south-eastern side was at that time protected by the sea, which rolled its waves to the very foot of the walls, and on the other three sides nature and art had spun a labyrinthine network of canals, ditches, and swamps, begotten by the many-armed Padus, among which all besiegers were hopelessly entangled.
And the walls! Even yet their mighty ruins fill the traveller with amazement. Their colossal width, and less their height than the number of strong round towers, which even now (1863) rise above the battlements, defied, before the invention of gunpowder, every means of attack.
It was only by starving the city that, after a resistance of nearly four years, the great Theodoric won this, Odoacer's last place of refuge.
In vain had Belisarius attempted to take the city by storm, as soon as he had reached the walls.