He had therefore forthwith renewed his old and intimate relations with the aristocrats and great men who ruled in the name of the mock Kings of the Merovingians in the courts of Mettis (Metz), Aurelianum (Orleans) and Suessianum (Soissons), in order to induce the Franks--whose perfidy, even then become a proverb, gave good hope that his efforts would be successful--to renounce the Gothic alliance.
And when the affair had been properly introduced by these friends, he himself wrote to King Theudebald, who held his court in Mettis, impressively warning him of the risk he would run if he supported such a ruined cause as that of the Goths had undeniably become since their ill-success in the siege of Rome.
This letter had been accompanied by rich gifts to his old friend, the Major Domus of the weak-minded King, and the Prefect impatiently waited, day by day, for the reply; the more impatiently because the altered demeanour of Mataswintha had cut off all the hopes he had entertained of effecting a more speedy conquest of the Goths.
The answer came--at the same time with an imperial letter from Byzantium--on a day which was equally pregnant with the fate of the heroes both in and out of Ravenna.
Hildebad, impatient at the long pause of idleness, had, one day at dawn, made a sudden sally upon the Byzantines from the Porta Faventina, which was under his special command. He had at first won great advantages, had burnt a portion of the enemies' implements of siege, and had spread terror all around.
He would, without doubt, have done still more mischief had not Belisarius, hurrying up, displayed at once all his heroism and generalship.
Without helmet or armour, just as he had hurried from his tent, he had first checked his own flying outposts, and had then thrown himself upon the Gothic pursuers, and by the utmost personal exertion had brought the fight to a standstill.
Afterwards he had man[oe]uvred his two flanks so cleverly, that Hildebad's retreat was greatly endangered, and the Goths were obliged to retreat speedily into the city.
Cethegus, who lay encamped before the Porta Honorius with his Isaurians, had found, on hastening to the assistance of Belisarius, that the fight was already over. He could not, therefore, avoid paying a visit to the commander-in-chief in his tent, in order to express his admiration of the heroes conduct, both as a general and a soldier; praise which was greedily listened to by Antonina.