They requested a truce, with a promise of surrendering the city, if no effectual relief should appear at the end of thirty days.

Instead of one month, the audacious Barbarian granted them three, in the just confidence that famine would anticipate the term of their capitulation.

After the reduction of Naples and Cumae, the provinces of Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, submitted to the king of the Goths.
Totila led his army to the gates of Rome, pitched his camp at Tibur, or Tivoli, within twenty miles of the capital, and calmly exhorted the senate and people to compare the tyranny of the Greeks with the blessings of the Gothic reign.
[Footnote 6112: This is not quite correct: he had crossed the Po before the battle of Faenza .-- M.] The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the revolution which three years' experience had produced in the sentiments of the Italians.

At the command, or at least in the name, of a Catholic emperor, the pope, [7] their spiritual father, had been torn from the Roman church, and either starved or murdered on a desolate island.

[8] The virtues of Belisarius were replaced by the various or uniform vices of eleven chiefs, at Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, &c., who abused their authority for the indulgence of lust or avarice.