Vitiges then abandoned Rome, but it seems not altogether. What he may
be supposed to have imagined Belisarius doing to his disadvantage,
that he himself did. He left in Rome a garrison of four thousand men
under a veteran general Leudaris, while he himself with the Gothic
army fell back upon Ravenna. No sooner was he gone than the surrender
of the City was offered to Belisarius by pope Silverius who spoke for
the citizens and the Roman people. This was the reality of the
situation. Then indeed an almost incredible blunder was committed, but
not by Vitiges. The four thousand Goths whom he had left to hold the
City, and at least to delay and waste the imperialists, marched out of
Rome along the Flaminian Way as Belisarius entered from the south by
the Via Latina. Leudaris alone refused to quit this post. He was taken
prisoner, and sent with the keys of the Eternal City to Justinian.
Belisarius established himself upon the Pincian Hill, and his first
act after his occupation of the City is significant both of his
profound knowledge of the barbarians and of the immutable
characteristics of a Latin people.
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