The Warwickshire Herald. — 1891-08-06 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

HOYE.  FALL  Meanwhile dire famine bore sway In the beta, cured city. Wheat was solfi for £22 a quarter, and the greater part of the citizens were thankful to live on coarse bread made of bran, which was doled out to them by Bessas at a quarter of the price of *heat. Before long even this bran became a luxury beyond their power of purchase. Doge and mice provided them with their only meals of flesh, but the staple article of food was nettles. With blackened skin and drawn faces, mere ghosts of their former selves, the once proud and prosperous citizens of Rome wandered about the waste places where these nettles grew, and often one of them would be found dead with hunger, his strength having suddenly failed him while attempting to gather his wretched meal. At length the misery was suddenly ended. Some 'saurian soldiers, who were guarding the Asinarian Gate in the south-east of the city, made overtures to the Gothic soldiers for the betrayal of their post. These 'saurian, were part of the former garrison of Naples, whom Totila had treated with great generosity after the surrender of that city. They remembered the kindness then shewn them, they were weary of the siege and disgusted with the selfish avarice of their generals, and they soon came to terms with the besiegers. Four of the bravest Goths being hoisted over the walls at night by the friendly Isaurians, ran round to the Asinarian Gate, battered its bolts and bars to pieces, and let in their waiting comrades. Unopposed, the Gothic army marched in,unresisting, the Imperial troops marched out by the Flaminian Gate. The play was precisely the same that had been enacted ten years before, when Beliaarius won the city from Sender's, but with the parts reversed. What Witigis with his one hundred and fifty thousand Goths had failed to accomplish, an army of not more than a tenth of that number had accomplished under Totila. Bessas and the other generals fled headlong with the rest of the crowd that pressed out of the Flaminian Gate, and the treasure accumulated with such brutal disregard of human suffering fell into the hands of the besiegers. At first murder and plunder raged unchecked through the streets ef the city, the exasperation which had been caused by the events of the long siege having made every Gothic heart bitter against Rome and Romans. But after sixty citizens had been 'laid, Totila, who had gone to St. Peter's to offer up prayers and lhanksgivings, listened to the intercession of the leacon Pelagius, and commanded that slaughter should cease. But there were only five hundred titizens left in Rome to receive the amnesty, so Treat had been the depopulation of the city by war Ind farnine.—"Theodoric, the Goth." By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. (London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.)  In time it had gradually become usual for the murt, in atrocious cases, to direct that the murlerer's body should be hung upon a gibbet in chains, tear the place where the crime was committed; but this was no part of the legal judgment. By an Act If 25 George 11. 1,752, gibbeting in chains was first legally recognised. By this statute it was tnacted that the body should, after sentence delivered and execution done, be given to the surteons to be dissected and anatontised, and that :he judge may direct the body to be afterwards bung in chains but in no wise to be buried without Essection. But still the gibbet did not form, as it never has formed, part of the legal sentence. The judge could direct it to be carried out by • . . .  speial order to the sheriff, and this was aomelimes done on the petition of the relatives of :he deceased. The theory was that the body was it the disposal of the Crown, and that an order o hang in chains would be granted on applicadon to the proper authorities. This post-mortem tevengement was thought to be a singularly great ....omfort to the relatives of the murdered man. The Roman law also permitted the murderer's body to remain on the gibbet after execution, as a com!ortable sight to the Arelatives of the deceased. The Act of 1752 seems to have cleared the way considerably and from this date gibbeting rapidly increased. It may here be recalled that the idea of being gibbeted was ever a very terrifying one ,o the sufferer, and many a strong man who had itood fearless under the dread sentence broke down when he was measured for his irons.—“ Hanging in Mains." By Albert Hartshorne, P.S.A. (London: T. Fisher Cowin.