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.
Postquam defecerunt homines etiam parietes cadunt. Jam ecce desolata, ecce contrita, ecce gemitibus oppressa est, &c.
All this was spoken by Gregory to the people of Rome, who were witnesses of the truth of it. Thus by the plagues of the four winds, the Empire of the Greeks was shaken, and the Empire of the Latins fell; and Rome remained nothing more than the capital of a poor dukedom, subordinate to Ravenna, the seat of the Exarchs.
The fifth trumpet sounded to the wars, which the King of the South, as he is called by Daniel, made in the time of the end, in pushing at the King who did according to his will. This plague began with the opening of the bottomless pit, which denotes the letting out of a false religion: the smoke which came out of the pit, signifying the multitude which embraced that religion; and the locusts which came out of the smoke, the armies which came out of that multitude. This pit was opened, to let out smoke and locusts into the regions of the four monarchies, or some of them. The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, being chief governor as well in religious as civil affairs, such as was the Caliph of the Saracens.
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