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This done, he drew off with his army, leaving Rome desolate, and without a living soul within its walls. For forty days the imperial city was given up to the wolf and the owl, but at last Belisarius, who still lay at Portus with his small army, marched within the walls, hurriedly barricaded the breaches and the gateless portals, and prepared to hold Rome for a third siege. The Goths had been too slack in casting down the walls, and the hasty repairs of Belisarius made the city once more tenable against any coup-de-main. |Belisarius recovers Rome.| In great disgust Baduila rushed back from Campania, and tried to force the barricades. After three assaults he recognised that they were too strong, and retired to central Italy, leaving, however, a strong corps of observation at Tivoli, to keep Belisarius from issuing out of the city for further operations.

For two years more Belisarius and Baduila fought up and down the peninsula, but the Goth kept the superiority; though sometimes foiled, he had, on the whole, the advantage. Belisarius, like Hannibal during the later years of his sojourn in Italy, flitted from point to point with his small army, looking for opportunities to strike a blow, but seldom finding them. Justinian, though now freed from the Persian War, sent no adequate supplies or reinforcements, and seemed content that his general should hold no more than Rome and Ravenna. In 548 Belisarius was recalled on his own or his wife’s request. He felt that he could do no more with his inadequate resources, he had outlived the desire of glory, and his old age was at hand. Justinian received him with kindness, made him magister militum and chief of the Imperial Guard, and bade him live in peace in Constantinople.