Vitiges gathers together an army of forty-five thousand men and on March 2 initiates a siege of Rome, subjecting the city to privation and starvation.
Belisarius conducts a delaying action outside the Flaminian Gate, where he and a detachment of his bucellarii are almost cut off.
Vitiges sets up seven camps, overlooking the main gates and access routes to the city, in order to starve it out.
He blocks the Roman aqueducts that are supplying Rome with water, necessary both for drinking and for operating the corn mills.
Vitiges attempts to assault the northern and eastern city walls with four siege towers on March 21, but is repulsed at the Praenestine Gate, known as the Vivarium, by the defenders under the imperial generals Bessas and Peranius.
Vigilius gives Belisarius the letters from the Court of Constantinople, which recommend Vigilius himself for the Papal See.
False accusations—namely, that Pope Silverius had written to Vitiges offering to betray the city—now lead Belisarius to depose Silverius on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Goths, and degrade him to the rank of a simple monk.
In his place, Vigilius is elected pope, consecrated and enthroned on March 29, 537.
Silverius finds his way to Constantinople, where Justinian entertains his complaint and sends him back to Rome, but Vigilius will eventually be able to banish his rival to the prison island Pandataria (Ventotene), where Silverius will spend the rest of his life in obscurity.
