Byzantine Influence

Cue (NZERS), 1 June 1944, Page 10

Byzantine Influence

The city of Rome welcomed their Byzantine 'deliverers and the Bishop of Rome invited Justinian’s representative to accept

the voluntary allegiance of the Holy See on December 9, 536. Within four months 150,000 Goths summoned from North of the Appenincs. were besieging ’the 12 miles circuit of the Aurelian Wall. Hadrian’s Mausoleum was converted into a fort, and after a siege of 374 days, reinforcements enabled the garrison to sally after the now retreating enemy. In 546, Rome Jell, by treachery, again to the Goths who enjoyed a scarcely earned pillage. The -walls were partially destroyed and only the personal intervention of Belisarius, whose army was too weak to protect the city, saved the city’s monuments from total destruction. In 547, the city was once more retrieved by Belisarius and the walls restored sufficiently to be of use when, in 549, another Isaurian treacherously re-admitted the Goths. The Byzantines sent a new army under the Palace eunuch Narses, who entered Rome in triumph in July, 552. ' '-Thus, in a period of 26 years, Rome

changed hands 5 times, was pillaged twice, and endured in addition over a year of siege. The wonder is t that so much remains of its past glories. During the Gothic war the Roman Senate, whose members had been dispersed throughout Italy, were slain. The city was in disorder. The aqueducts had been cut or had fallen into disrepair, and the population was forced to seek quarters nearer the perennial water supply of the Tiber and where the Ponte Rotto afforded

a 'crossing. The suburbs were totally ruined, the vineyards and olive groves had gone back to a wild state, while malaria flourished in the abandoned countryside.