And by the end of the year there remained to him but Ravenna, his
fortress, and the two cities that it commanded, Cesena upon the
Aemilian Way and Rimini in the midst of the narrow pass at the head of
the Via Flaminia. Theodoric himself began the siege of Ravenna.
This siege, the first that Ravenna had ever experienced, endured for
near three years, from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493. "_Et
mox_" says a chronicle of the time, "_subsecutus est eum patricius
Theodoricus veniens in Pineta, et fixit fossatum, obsidiens Odoacrem
clausum per trienum in Ravenna et factus est usque ad sex solidos
modicus tritici_...."[1] Theodoric established himself in a fortified
camp in the Pineta with a view to preventing food or reinforcements
arriving to his enemy from the sea. Ravenna was closed upon all sides
and before the end of the siege corn rose in the beleaguered city to
famine price, some seventy-two shillings of our money per peck, and
the inhabitants were forced to eat the skins of animals and all sorts
of offal, and many died of hunger.
[Footnote 1: Anon. Valesii.
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