The plague of the northern wind, at the sounding of the fourth trumpet, was to cause the Sun, Moon and Stars, that is, the King, kingdom and Princes of the Western Empire, to be darkened, and to continue some time in darkness. Accordingly Belisarius, having conquered the Vandals, invaded italy A.C. 535, and made war upon the Ostrogoths in Dalmatia, Liburnia, Venetia, Lombardy, Tuscany, and other regions northward from Rome, twenty years altogether. In this war many cities were taken and retaken. In retaking Millain from the Romans, the Ostrogoths slew all the males young and old, amounting, as Procopius reckons, to three hundred thousand, and sent the women captives to their allies the Burgundians.
Rome itself was taken and retaken several times, and thereby the people were thinned; the old government by a Senate ceased, the nobles were ruined, and all the glory of the city was extinguished: and A.C. 552, after a war of seventeen years, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths fell, yet the remainder of the Ostrogoths, and an army of Germans called in to their assistance, continued the war three or four years longer. Then ensued the war of the Heruli, who, as Anastasius tells us, perimebant cunctam Italiam, slew all Italy. This was followed by the war of the Lombards, the fiercest of all the Barbarians, which began A.C. 568, and lasted for thirty eight years together; facta tali clade, saith Anastasius, qualem a saeculo nullus meminit; ending at last in the Papacy of Sabinian, A.C. 605, by a peace then made with the Lombards. Three years before this war ended, Gregory the great, then Bishop of Rome, thus speaks of it: Qualiter enim & quotidianis gladiis & quantis Longobardorum incursionibus ecce jam per triginta quinque annorum longitudinem premimur, nullis explere vocibus suggestionis valemus: and in one of his Sermons to the people, he thus expresses the great consumption of the Romans by these wars: Ex illa plebe innumerabili quanti remanseritis aspicitis, & tamen adhuc quotidie flagella urgent, repentini casus opprimunt, novae res & improvisae clades affliguent. In another Sermon he thus describes the desolations: Destructae urbes, eversa sunt castra, depopulati agri, in solitudinem terra redacta est. Nullus in agris incola, pene nullus in urbibus habitator remansit. Et tamen ipsae parvae generis humani reliquiae adhuc quotidie & sine cessatione feriuntur, & finem non habent flagella coelestis justitiae. Ipsa autem quae aliquando mundi Domina esse videbatur, qualis remansit Roma conspicimus innumeris doloribus multipliciter attrita, desolatione civium, impressione hostium, frequentia ruinarum. — Ecce jam de illa omnes hujus saeculi potentes ablati sunt. — Ecce populi defecerunt. — Ubi enim Senatus? Ubi jam populus? Contabuerunt ossa, consumptae sunt carnes. Omnis enim saecularium dignitatum ordo extinctus est, & tamen ipsos nos paucos qui remansimus, adhuc quotidie gladii, adhuc innumerae tribulationes premunt — Vacua jam ardet Roma. Quid autem ista de hominibus decimus? Cum rinis crebrescentibus ipsa quoque destrui aedificia videmas.
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