Читать книгу The Dark Ages, 476-918 онлайн

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A fortnight after arriving in front of the walls Witiges had his engines ready, and delivered his great assault on the northern and north-eastern fronts of the city. Everywhere the attack failed; the towers and rams which the Goths had drawn forward never reached the walls; the oxen which drew them were shot down before they neared the ditch. But thousands of wild warriors with scaling-ladders delivered assaults against innumerable portions of the enceinte. In most cases they failed entirely; the walls of Aurelian were too strong; but at two points, at opposite ends of the city, they nearly won success. At the Praenestine gate a battering-ram broke in the outer bulwarks, and a swarm of Goths was only held back by an inner entrenchment till the reinforcements of Belisarius arrived. But greater danger still was encountered at the Mausoleum of Hadrian (castle of St. Angelo), just beyond the Ælian Bridge. |Belisarius defends Rome, 536-37.| There the Goths filled the ditch, overwhelmed the defenders with arrows, and were fitting their ladders to the embrasures, when they were at last checked by a strange expedient. The walls of the mausoleum were lined with dozens of splendid statues, some of them figures of emperors, others the ancient spoils of Greece. At the supreme moment the desperate garrison flung these colossal figures on the besiegers below, and drove them off by the hail of marble fragments.