'Our miseries are but dawning as yet! In the next street lies the corpse of a woman, and--horrible omen!--a coil of serpents is wreathed about her neck! We have no burial-place to receive her, and the thousands who may die like her, ere assistance arrives.

The city sepulchres outside the walls are in the hands of the Goths.

The people stand round the body in a trance of horror, for they have now discovered a fatal truth we would fain have concealed from them--' Here the Prefect paused, looked round affrightedly on his listeners, and then added in low trembling tones-- 'The citizens are lying dead from famine in the streets of Rome!'.