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Title : standard furniture cottage retreat youth
standard furniture cottage retreat youth
theodoric the goth: barbarian champion ofcivilisation by thomas hodgkin preface in the following pages i have endeavouredto portray the life and character of one of the most striking figures in the history ofthe early middle ages, theodoric the ostrogoth. the plan of the series, for which this volumehas been prepared, does not admit of minute discussion of the authorities on which thehistory rests. in my case the omission is of the less consequence, as i have treatedthe subject more fully in my larger work, "italy and her invaders", and as also thechief authorities are fully enumerated in that book which is or ought to be in the libraryof every educated englishman and american,
gibbon's "history of the decline and fallof the roman empire". the fifth and sixth centuries do not supplyus with many materials for pictorial illustrations, and i do not know where to look for authenticand contemporary representations of the civil or military life of theodoric and his subjects.we have, however, a large and interesting store of nearly contemporary works of artat ravenna, illustrating the ecclesiastical life of the period, and of these the engraverhas made considerable use. the statue of theodoric at innsbruck, a representation of which isincluded with the illustrations, possesses, of course, no historical value, but is interestingas showing how deeply the memory of theodoric's great deeds had impressed itself on the mindof the middle ages.
and here i will venture on a word of personalreminiscence. the figure of theodoric the ostrogoth has been an interesting and attractiveone to me from the days of my boyhood. i well remember walking with a friend on a littlehill (then silent and lonely, now covered with houses), looking down on london, anddiscussing european politics with the earnest interest which young debaters bring to sucha theme. the time was in those dark days which followed the revolutions of 1848, when itseemed as if the life of the european nations would be crushed out under the heel of returnedand triumphant despotism. for italy especially, after the defeat of novara, there seemed nohope. we talked of mazzini, cavour, garibaldi, and discussed the possibility--which thenseemed so infinitely remote--that there might
one day be a free and united italy. we bothagreed that the vision was a beautiful one, but was there any hope of it ever becominga reality? my friend thought there was not, and argued from the fact of italy's dividedcondition in the past, that she must always be divided in the future. i, who was on theside of hope, felt the weakness of my position, and was driven backward through the centuries,till at length i took refuge in the reign of theodoric. surely, under the ostrogothicking, italy had been united, strong, and prosperous. my precedent was a remote one, but it wasadmitted, and it did a little help my cause. since that conversation more than forty yearshave passed. the beautiful land is now united, free, and mighty; and a new generation hasarisen, which, though aware of the fact that
she was not always thus, has but a faint conceptionhow much blood and how many tears, what thousands of broken hearts and broken lives went tothe winning of italy's freedom. i, too, with fuller knowledge of her early history, ambound to confess that her unity even under theodoric was not so complete as i then imaginedit. but still, as i have more than once stated in the following pages, i look upon his reignas a time full of seeds of promise for italy and the world, if only these seeds might havehad time to germinate and ripen into harvest. closer study has only confirmed me in theopinion that the ostrogothic kingdom was one of the great "might-have-beens" of history. thomas hodgkin.
newcastle-on-tyne,january 25, 1891. introduction theodoric the ostrogoth is one of those menwho did great deeds and filled a large space in the eyes of their contemporaries, but who,not through their own fault, but from the fact that the stage of the world was not yetready for their appearance, have failed to occupy the very first rank among the foundersof empires and the moulders of the fortunes of the human race. he was born into the world at the time whenthe roman empire in the west was staggering blindly to ruin, under the crushing blowsinflicted upon it by two generations of barbarian
conquerors. that empire had been for morethan six centuries indisputably the strongest power in europe, and had gathered into itsbosom all that was best in the civilisation of the nations that were settled round themediterranean sea. rome had given her laws to all these peoples, had, at any rate inthe west, made their roads, fostered the growth of their cities, taught them her language,administered justice, kept back the barbarians of the frontier, and for great spaces of timepreserved "the roman peace" throughout their habitations. doubtless there was another sideto this picture: heavy taxation, corrupt judges, national aspirations repressed, free peasantssinking down into hopeless bondage. still it cannot be denied that during a considerablepart of its existence the roman empire brought,
at least to the western half of europe, materialprosperity and enjoyment of life which it had not known before, and which it often lookedback to with vain regrets when the great empire had fallen into ruins. but now, in the middleof the fifth century, when theodoric was born amid the rude splendour of an ostrogothicpalace, the unquestioned ascendancy of rome over the nations of europe was a thing ofthe past. there were still two men, one at the old rome by the tiber, and the other atthe new rome by the bosphorus, who called themselves august, pious, and happy, who worethe diadem and the purple shoes of diocletian, and professed to be joint lords of the universe.before the eastern augustus and his successors there did in truth lie a long future of dominion,and once or twice they were to recover no
inconsiderable portion of the broad landswhich had formerly been the heritage of the roman people. but the roman empire at romewas stricken with an incurable malady. the three sieges and the final sack of rome byalaric (410) revealed to the world that she was no longer "roma invicta", and from thattime forward every chief of teutonic or sclavonic barbarians who wandered with his tribe overthe wasted plains between the danube and the adriatic, might cherish the secret hope thathe, too, would one day be drawn in triumph up the capitolian hill, through the cowedranks of the slavish citizens of rome, and that he might be lodged on the palatine inone of the sumptuous palaces which had been built long ago for "the lords of the world".
thus there was everywhere unrest and, as itwere, a prolonged moral earthquake. the old order of things was destroyed, and none couldforecast the shape of the new order of things that would succeed to it. something similarhas been the state of europe ever since the great french revolution; only that her barbariansthreaten her now from within, not from without. the social state which had been in existencefor centuries, and which had come to be accepted as if it were one of the great ordinancesof nature, is either menaced or is actually broken up, and how the new democracy willrearrange itself in the seats of the old civilisation the wisest statesman cannot foretell. but to any "shepherd of his people", barbarianor roman, who looked with foreseeing eye and
understanding heart over the europe of thefifth century, the duty of the hour was manifest. the great fabric of the roman empire mustnot be allowed to go to pieces in hopeless ruin. if not under roman augusti, under barbariankings bearing one title or another, the organisation of the empire must be preserved. the barbarianswho had entered it, often it must be confessed merely for plunder, were remaining in it torule, and they could not rule by their own unguided instincts. their institutions, whichhad answered well enough for a half-civilised people, leading their simple, primitive lifein the clearings of the forest of germany, were quite unfitted for the complicated relationsof the urban and social life of the mediterranean lands. there is one passage which has beenquoted almost to weariness, but which it seems
necessary to quote again, in order to showhow an enlightened barbarian chief looked upon the problem with which he found himselfconfronted, as an invader of the empire. ataulfus, brother-in-law and successor of alaric, thefirst capturer of rome, "was intimate with a certain citizen of narbonne, a grave, wise,and religious person who had served with distinction under theodosius, and often remarked to himthat in the first ardour of his youth he had longed to obliterate the roman name and turnall the roman lands into an empire which should be, and should be called, the empire of thegoths, so that what used to be commonly known as romania should now be 'gothia,' and thathe, ataulfus, should be in the world what cã¦sar augustus had been. but now that hehad proved by long experience that the goths,
on account of their unbridled barbarism, couldnot be induced to obey the laws, and yet that, on the other hand, there must be laws, sincewithout them the commonwealth would cease to be a commonwealth, he had chosen, for hispart at any rate, that he would seek the glory of renewing and increasing the roman nameby the arms of his gothic followers, and would be remembered by posterity as the restorerof rome, since he could not be its changer". this conversation will be found to expressthe thoughts of theodoric the ostrogoth, as well as those of ataulfus the visigoth, theodoricalso, in his hot youth, was the enemy of the roman name and did his best to overturn theroman state. but he, too, saw that a nobler career was open to him as the preserver ofthe priceless blessings of roman civilisation,
and he spent his life in the endeavour toinduce the goths to copy those laws, without which a commonwealth ceases to be a commonwealth.in this great and noble design he failed, as has been already said, because the timeswere not ripe for it, because a continuation of adverse events, which we should call persistentill-luck if we did not believe in an overruling providence, blighted and blasted his infantstate before it had time to root itself firmly in the soil. none the less, however, doestheodoric deserve credit for having seen what was the need of europe, and pre-eminentlyof italy, and for having done his best to supply that need. the great work in whichhe failed was accomplished three centuries later by charles the frank, who has won forhimself that place in the first rank of world-moulders
which theodoric has missed. but we may fairlysay that theodoric's designs were as noble and as statesmanlike as those of the greatemperor charles, and that if they had been crowned with the success which they deserved,three centuries of needless barbarism and misery would have been spared to europe. chapter i.theodoric's ancestors. towards the end of the second century of thechristian era a great confederacy of teutonic nations occupied those vast plains in thesouth of russia which are now, and have been for more than a thousand years, the homesof sclavonic peoples. these nations were the ostrogoths, the visigoths, and the gepidã¦.approximately we may say that the ostrogoths
(or east goths) dwelt from the don to thednieper, the visigoths (or west goths) from the dnieper to the pruth, and the gepidã¦to the north of both, in the district which has since been known as little russia. thesethree nations were, as has been said, teutons, and they belonged to that division of theteutonic race which is called low-german, man; that is to say, that they were more nearlyallied to the frisians, the dutch, and to our own saxon forefathers than they were tothe ancestors of the modern swabian, bavarian, and austrian. they worshipped odin and thunnor;they wrote the scanty records of their race in runic characters; they were probably chieflya pastoral folk, but may have begun to practise agriculture in the rich cornlands of the ukraine.they were essentially a monarchic people,
following their kings, whom they believedto be sprung from the seed of gods, loyally to the field, and shedding their blood withreadiness at their command; but their monarchy was of the early teutonic type, always moreor less limited by the deliberations of the great armed assembly of the nation, which(in some tribes at least) was called the folc-mote or the folc-thing; and there were no strictrules of hereditary succession, the crown being elective but limited in practice tothe members of one ruling and heaven-descended family. this family, sprung from the seed of gods,but ruling by the popular will over the ostrogothic people, was known as the family of the amals.it is true that the divine and exclusive prerogatives
of the family have been somewhat magnifiedby the minstrels who sang in the courts of their descendants, for there are manifesttraces of kings ruling over the ostrogothic people, who are not included in the amal genealogy.still, as far as we can peer through the obscurity of the early history of the people, we maysafely say that there was no other family of higher position than the amals, and thatgradually all that consciousness of national life and determination to cherish nationalunity, which among the germanic peoples was inseparably connected with the institutionof royalty, centred round the race of the divine amala. the following is the pedigree of this royalclan, as given by the historian of the goths,
and with those epithets which the secretaryof theodoric attached to the names of some of the ancestors of his lord. gapt (possibly equivalent to gaut, the eponymoushero of the gothic nation), who was the father of hulmul, who was the father of augis, whowas the father of amal the fortunate, who was the father of hisarna the man of iron,who was the father of ostrogotha the patient, who was the father of hunuil, who was thefather of athal the mild, who was the father of achiulf and odwulf, achiulf was the fatherof ansila, ediulf, vultwulf and hermanric, hermanric was the father of hunimund the beautiful,who was the father of thorismund the chaste, vultwulf was the father of walaravans, whowas the father of winithar the just, who was
the father of wideric, who was the fatherof wandalar, who was the father of walamir the faithful, theudemir the affectionate andwidemir, theudemir was the father of theodoric. these fifteen generations, which should carryback the amal ancestry four hundred and fifty years, or almost precisely to the christianera, seem to have marked the utmost limit to which the memory of the gothic heralds,aided by the songs of the gothic minstrels, could reach. the forms of many of the names,the initial "wala" and "theude", the terminal "wulf", "mir", and "mund" will be at oncerecognised as purely teutonic, recalling many similar names in the royal lines of the franks,the visigoths and the vandals, and the west saxons.
in the great, loosely knit confederacy whichhas been described as filling the regions of southern russia in the third and fourthcenturies of our era, the predominant power seems to have been held by the ostrogothicnation. in the third century, when a succession of weak ephemeral emperors ruled and all butruined the roman state, the goths swarmed forth in their myriads, both by sea and land,to ravage the coast of the euxine and the ã†gean, to cross the passes of the balkans,to make their desolating presence felt at ephesus and at athens. two great emperorsof illyrian origin, claudius and aurelian, succeeded, at a fearful cost of life, in repellingthe invasion and driving back the human torrent. but it was impossible to recover from thebarbarians trajan's province of dacia, which
they had overrun, and the emperors wiselycompromised the dispute by abandoning to the goths and their allies all the territory northof the danube. this abandoned province was chiefly occupied by the visigoths, the westernmembers of the confederacy, who for the century from 275 to 375 were the neighbours, generallythe allies, by fitful impulses the enemies, of rome. with constantine the great especiallythe visigoths came powerfully in contact, first as invaders and then as allies (få“derati)bound to furnish a certain number of auxiliaries to serve under the eagles of the empire. meanwhile the ostrogoths, with their facesturned for the time northward instead of southward, were battling daily with the nations of finnishor sclavonic stock that dwelt by the upper
waters of the dnieper, the don, and the volga,and were extending their dominion over the greater part of what we now call russia-in-europe.the lord of this wide but most loosely compacted kingdom, in the middle of the fourth century,was a certain hermanric, whom his flatterers, with some slight knowledge of the names heldin highest repute among their southern neighbours, likened to alexander the great for the magnitudeof his conquests. however shadowy some of these conquests may appear in the light ofmodern criticism, there can be little doubt that the visigoths owned his over-lordship,and that when constantius and julian were reigning in constantinople, the greatest nameover a wide extent of territory north of the black sea was that of hermanric the ostrogoth.
when this warrior was in extreme old age,a terrible disaster befell his nation and himself. it was probably about the year 374that a horde of asiatic savages made their appearance in the south-eastern corner ofhis dominions, having, so it is said, crossed the sea of azof in its shallowest part bya ford. these men rode upon little ponies of great speed and endurance, each of whichseemed to be incorporated with its rider, so perfect was the understanding between thehorseman, who spent his days and nights in the saddle, and the steed which he bestrode.little black restless eyes gleamed beneath their low foreheads and matted hair; no beardor whisker adorned their uncouth yellow faces; the turanian type in its ugliest form wasdisplayed by these mongolian sons of the wilderness.
they bore a name destined to be of disastrousand yet also indirectly of most beneficent import in the history of the world; for theseare the true shatterers of the roman empire. they were the terrible huns. before the impact of this new and strangeenemy the empire of hermanric--an empire which rested probably rather on the reputation ofwarlike prowess than on any great inherent strength, military or political--went downwith a terrible crash. dissimilar as are the times and the circumstances, we are remindedof the collapse of the military systems of austria and prussia under the onset of theragged jacobins of france, shivering and shoeless, but full of demonic energy, when we read ofthe humiliating discomfiture of this stately
ostrogothic monarchy--doubtless possessingan ordered hierarchy of nobles, free warriors, and slaves--by the squalid, hard-faring and,so to say, democratic savages from asia. the death of hermanric, which was evidentlydue to the hunnish victory, is assigned by the gothic historian to a cause less humiliatingto the national vanity. the king of the rosomones, "a perfidious nation", had taken the opportunityof the appearance of the savage invaders to renounce his allegiance, perhaps to deserthis master treacherously on the field of battle. the enraged hermanric, unable to vent hisfury on the king himself, caused his wife, swanhilda, to be torn asunder by wild horsesto whom she was tied by the hands and feet. her brothers, sarus and ammius, avenged hercruel death by a spear-thrust, which wounded
the aged monarch, but did not kill him outright.then came the crisis of the invasion of the huns under their king balamber. the visigoths,who had some cause of complaint against hermanric, left him to fight his battle without theiraid; and the old king, in sore pain with his wound and deeply mortified by the incursionof the huns, breathed out his life in the one hundred and tenth year of his age. allof which is probably a judicious veiling of the fact, that the great hermanric was defeatedby the hunnish invaders, and in his despair laid violent hands on himself. the huge and savage horde rolled on over thewide plains of russia. the ostrogothic resistance was at an end; and soon the invaders wereon the banks of the dniester threatening the
kindred nation of the visigoths. athanaric,"judge" (as he was called) of the visigoths, a brave, old soldier, but not a very skilfulgeneral, was soon out-manå“uvred by these wild nomads from the desert, who crossed therivers by unexpected fords, and by rapid night-marches turned the flank of his most carefully chosenpositions. the line of the dniester was abandoned; the line of the pruth was lost. it was plainthat the visigoths, like their eastern brethren, if they remained in the land, must bow theirheads beneath the hunnish yoke. to avoid so degrading a necessity, and if they must losetheir independence, to lose it to the stately emperors of rome rather than to the chiefof a filthy tartar horde, the great majority of the visigothic nation flocked southwardthrough the region which is now called wallachia,
and, standing on the northern shore of thedanube, prayed for admission within the province of må“sia and the empire of rome. in 376 anevil hour for himself valens, the then reigning emperor of the east, granted this petitionand received into his dominions the visigothic fugitives, a great and warlike nation, withouttaking any proper precautions, on the one hand, that they should be disarmed, on theother, that they should be supplied with food for their present necessities and enabledfor the future to become peaceful cultivators of the soil. the inevitable result followed.before many months had elapsed the visigoths were in arms against the empire, and underthe leadership of their hereditary chiefs were wandering up and down through the provincesof må“sia and thrace, wresting from the terror-stricken
provincials not only the food which the parsimonyof valens had failed to supply them with, but the treasures which centuries of peacehad stored up in villa and unwalled town. in 378 they achieved a brilliant, and perhapsunexpected, triumph, defeating a large army commanded by the roman emperor valens in person,in a pitched battle near adrianople. valens himself perished on the field of battle, andhis unburied corpse disappeared among the embers of a thracian hut which had been setfire to by the barbarians. that fatal day (august 9, 378) was admitted to be more disastrousfor rome than any which had befallen her since the terrible defeat of cannã¦, and from itwe may fitly date the beginning of that long process of dissolution, lasting, in a certainsense, more than a thousand years, which we
call the fall of the roman empire. in this long tragedy the part of chief actorfell, during the first act, to the visigothic nation. with their doings we have here nospecial concern. it is enough to say that for one generation they remained in the landssouth of the danube, first warring against rome, then, by the wise policy of their conqueror,theodosius, incorporated in her armies under the title of få“derati and serving her inthe main with zeal and fidelity. in 395 a visigothic chief, alaric by name, of the god-descendedseed of balthã¦, was raised upon the shield by the warriors of his tribe and hailed astheir king. his elevation seems to have been understood as a defiance to the empire anda re-assertion of the old national freedom
which had prevailed on the other side of thedanube. at any rate the rest of his life was spent either in hostility to the empire orin a pretence of friendship almost more menacing than hostility. he began by invading greeceand penetrated far south into the peloponnesus. he then took up a position in the provinceof illyricum--probably in the countries now known as bosnia and servia--from which hecould threaten the eastern or western empire at pleasure. finally, with the beginning ofthe fifth century after christ, he descended into italy, and though at first successfulonly in ravage, in the second invasion he penetrated to the very heart of the empire.his three sieges of rome, ending in the awful event of the capture and sack of the eternalcity in 410, are events in the history of
the world with which every student is familiar.only it may be remarked that the word awful, which is here used designedly, is not meantto imply that the loss of life was unusually large or the cruelty of the captors outrageous;in both respects alaric and his goths would compare favourably with some generals andsome armies making much higher pretensions to civilisation. nor is it meant that thedestruction of the public buildings of the city was extensive. there can be little doubtthat paris, on the day after the suppression of the "commune" in 1871, presented a fargreater appearance of desolation and ruin than rome in 410, when she lay trembling inthe hand of alaric. but the bare fact that rome herself, the roma ã†terna, the roma invictaof a thousand coins of a hundred emperors,--rome,
whose name for centuries on the shores ofthe mediterranean had been synonymous with worldwide dominion,--should herself be taken,sacked, dishonoured by the presence of a flaxen-haired barbarian conqueror from the north, was oneof those events apparently so contrary to the very course of nature itself, that thenations which heard the tidings, many of them old and bitter enemies of rome, now her subjectsand her friends, held their breath with awe at the terrible recital. alaric died shortly after his sack of rome,and after a few years of aimless fighting his nation quitted italy, disappearing overthe north-western alpine boundary to win for themselves new settlements by the banks ofthe garonne and the ebro. their leader was
that ataulfus whose truly statesmanlike reflectionson the unwisdom of destroying the roman empire and the necessity of incorporating the barbarianswith its polity have been already quoted. there, in the south-western corner of gauland the northern regions of spain, we must for the present leave the western branch ofthe great gothic nationality, while our narrative returns to its eastern representatives. chapter ii.the might of attila. for eighty years the power of the ostrogothssuffered eclipse under the shadow of hunnish barbarism. as to this period we have littlehistorical information that is of any value. we hear of resistance to the hunnish supremacyvainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. the
son and the grandson of hermanric figure asthe shadowy heroes of this vain resistance. after the death of the latter (king thorismund)a strange story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years, during all whichtime they refused to elect any other king to replace him whom they had lost. there canbe little doubt that this legend veils the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed anddispirited under the yoke of the conquering huns, had not energy or patriotism enoughto choose a king; since almost invariably among the teutons of that age, kingship andnational unity flourished or faded together. at length, towards the middle of the fifthcentury after christ, the darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the ostrogothic nationowning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung
from the amal race, but not direct descendantsof hermanric, whose names are walamir, theudemir, and widemir. "beautiful it was", says thegothic historian, "to behold the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the admirabletheudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of walamir; when walamir adornedhim with the crown at the same time that he conveyed to him his orders; when widemir gladlyrendered his services to both of his brothers". theudemir, the second in this royal brotherhood,was the father of our hero, theodoric. the three ostrogothic brethren, kings towardstheir own countrymen, were subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-rulingking of the huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by whom the conqueringtribe had been first led into europe, but
attila, a name of fear to his contemporariesand long remembered in the roman world. he, with his brother bleda, mounted the barbarianthrone in the year 433, and after twelve years the death of bleda (who was perhaps murderedby order of his brother) left attila sole wielder of the forces which made him the terrorof the world. he dwelt in rude magnificence in a village not far from the danube, andhis own special dominions seem to have pretty nearly corresponded with the modern kingdomof hungary. but he held in leash a vast confederacy of nations--teutonic, sclavonic, and whatwe now call turanian,--whose territories stretched from the rhine to the caucasus, and he issaid to have made "the isles of the ocean", which expression probably denotes the islandsand peninsulas of scandinavia, subject to
his sway. neither, however, over the ostrogothsnor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion are we to thinkof attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating, assimilating influence, such as was the ruleof a roman emperor. it was rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebootingcompanions. the kings of the ostrogoths and gepid㦠came at certain times to share therevelries of their lord in his great log-palace on the danubian plain; they received his ordersto put their subjects in array when he would ride forth to war, and woe was unto them ifthey failed to stand by his side on the day of battle; but these things being done, theyprobably ruled their own peoples with little interference from their over-lord. the teutonicmembers of the confederacy, notably the ostrogoths
and the kindred tribe of gepid㦠seem to haveexercised upon the court and the councils of attila an influence not unlike that wieldedby german statesmen at the court of russia during the last century. the huns, duringtheir eighty years of contact with europe, had lost a little of that utter savagenesswhich they brought with them from the tartar deserts. if they were not yet in any sensecivilised, they could in some degree appreciate the higher civilisation of their teutonicsubjects. a pagan himself, with scarcely any religion except some rude cult of the swordof the war-god, attila seems never to have interfered in the slightest degree with thereligious practices of the gepid㦠or the ostrogoths, the large majority of whom wereby this time christians, holding the arian
form of faith. and not only did he not discouragethe finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these german subjects of his, but heseems to have had statesmanship enough to value and respect a culture which he did notshare, and especially to have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped himto array his great host of barbarians for war against the empire. from his position in central europe, attila,like alaric before him, was able to threaten either the eastern or the western empire atpleasure. for almost ten years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel withtheodosius ii., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at constantinople. he laid wastethe provinces south of the danube with his
desolating raids; he worried the imperialcourt with incessant embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for thefavour of the rude hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the imperialtreasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly stipendia by the emperor; he constantlydemanded that these payments should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing elsethan tribute, and that the roman augustus who paid them was his slave. these practices were continued until, in theyear 450 the gentle theodosius died. he was succeeded by his sister pulcheria and herhusband marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the eastern empire. attilamarked the change and turned his harassing
attentions to the western state, with whichhe had always a sufficient number of pretexts for war ready for use. in fact he had madeup his mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of valentinian iii.,the then emperor of the west, would have availed to stay his progress. not italy however, tosome extent protected by the barrier of the alps, but the rich cities and comparativelyunwasted plains of gaul attracted the royal freebooter. having summoned his vast and heterogeneousarmy from every quarter of central and north-eastern europe, and surrounded himself by a crowdof subject kings, the captains of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for thelands of the rhine. the trees which his soldiers felled in the great hercynian forest of centralgermany were fashioned into rude rafts or
canoes, on which they crossed the rhine; andsoon the terrible hun and his "horde of many-nationed spoilers" were passing over the regions whichwe now call belgium and lorraine in a desolating stream. the huns, not only barbarians, butheathens, seem in this invasion to have been animated by an especial hatred to christianity.many a fair church of gallia belgica was laid in ashes: many a priest was slain before thealtar, whose sanctity was vain for his protection. the real cruelties thus committed are wildlyexaggerated by the mythical fancy of the middle ages, and upon the slenderest foundationsof historical fact arose stately edifices of fable, like the story of the cornish princessursula, who with her eleven thousand virgin companions was fabled to have suffered deathat the hands of the huns in the city of cologne.
the barbarian tide was at length arrestedby the strong walls of orleans, whose stubborn defence saved all that part of gaul whichlies within the protecting curve of the loire from the horrors of their invasion. at midsummerattila and his host were retiring from the untaken city, and beginning their retreattowards the rhine, a retreat which they were not to accomplish unhindered. the extremityof the danger from these utterly savage foes had welded together the old empire and thenew gothic kingdom, the civilised and the half-civilised power, in one great confederacy,for the defence of all that was worth saving in human society. the tidings of the approachof the gothic king had hastened the departure of attila from the environs of orleans, and,perhaps about a fortnight later, the allied
armies of romans and goths came up with theretreating huns in "the catalaunian plains" not far from the city of troyes. the generalof the imperial army was aã«tius; the general and king of the visigoths was theodoric, anamesake of our hero. both were capable and valiant soldiers. on the other side, conspicuousamong the subject kings who formed the staff of attila, were the three ostrogothic brethren,and ardaric, king of the gepidã¦. the loyalty of walamir, the firm grasp with which he kepthis master's secrets, and ardaric's resourcefulness in counsel were especially prized by attila.and truly he had need of all their help, for, though it is difficult to ascertain with anydegree of accuracy the numbers actually engaged (162,000 are said to have fallen on both sides),it is clear that this was a collision of nations
rather than of armies, and that it requiredgreater skill than any that the rude hunnish leader possessed, to win the victory for hisenormous host. after "a battle ruthless, manifold, gigantic, obstinate, such as antiquity neverdescribed when she told of warlike deeds, such as no man who missed the sight of thatmarvel might ever hope to have another chance of beholding", night fell upon the virtuallydefeated huns. the gothic king had lost his life, but attila had lost the victory. allnight long the huns kept up a barbarous dissonance to prevent the enemy from attacking them,but their king's thoughts were of suicide. he had prepared a huge funeral pyre, on which,if the enemy next day successfully attacked his camp, he was determined to slay himselfamid the kindled flames, in order that neither
living nor dead the mighty attila might fallinto the hands of his enemies. these desperate expedients, however, were not required. thedeath of theodoric, the caution of aã«tius, some jealousy perhaps between the roman andthe goth, some anxiety on the part of the eldest gothic prince as to the successionto his father's throne,--all these causes combined to procure for attila a safe butclosely watched return into his own land. the battle of the catalaunian plains (usuallybut not quite correctly called the battle of chã¢lons) was a memorable event in thehistory of the gothic race, of europe, and of the world. it was a sad necessity whichon this one occasion arrayed the two great branches of the gothic people, the visigothsunder theodoric, and the ostrogoths under
walamir, in fratricidal strife against eachother. for europe the alliance between roman and goth, between the grandson of theodosius,emperor of rome, and the successor of alaric, the besieger of rome, was of priceless valueand showed that the great and statesmanlike thought of ataulfus was ripening in the mindsof those who came after him. for the world, yes even for us in the nineteenth century,and for the great undiscovered continents beyond the sea, the repulse of the squalidand unprogressive turanian from the seats of the old historic civilisation, was essentialto the preservation of whatever makes human life worth living. had attila conquered onthe catalaunian plains, an endless succession of jenghiz khans and tamerlanes would probablyhave swept over the desolated plains of europe;
paris and florence would have been even askhiva and bokhara, and the island of britain would not have yet attained to the degreeof civilisation reached by the peninsula of corea. in the year after the fruitless invasion ofgaul, attila crossed the julian alps and entered italy, intending (452) doubtless to rivalthe fame of alaric by his capture of rome, an operation which would have been attendedwith infinitely greater ruin to "the seven-hilled city's pride", than any which she had sustained at the handsof the visigothic leader. but the huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before thewalls of aquileia, that great and flourishing
frontier city, hitherto deemed impregnable,which gathered in the wealth of the venetian province, and guarded the north-eastern approachesto italy. at length by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, whichthey destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the sword, and thenwrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatresof the fourth city of italy. the terror of this brutal destruction took from the othercities of venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. from concordia, altino,padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded, or sailed with their hastily gatheredand most precious possessions to the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringedthe adriatic coast, near the mouths of the
brenta and adige. there at torcello, burano,rialto, malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble foundations of that whichwas one day to be the gorgeous and wide-ruling republic of venice. attila meanwhile marched on through the valleyof the po ravaging and plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction,as the remembrance of the stubborn defence of aquileia faded from his memory. enteringmilan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture representing the emperors of the romans sittingon golden thrones, and the scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a milanesepainter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, attila, sitting on the throne, and thetwo roman emperors staggering under sacks
full of gold coin, which they bore upon theirshoulders, and pouring out their precious contents at his feet. this little incident helps us to understandthe next strange act in the drama of attila's invasion. to enjoy the luxury of humblingthe great empire, and of trampling on the pride of her statesmen, seems to have beenthe sweetest pleasure of his life. this mere gratification of his pride, the pride of anupstart barbarian, at the expense of the inheritors of a mighty name and the representatives ofvenerable traditions, was the object which took him into italy, rather than any carefullyprepared scheme of worldwide conquest. accordingly when that august body, the senate of rome,sent a consul, a prefect, and more than all
a pope, the majestic and fitly-named leo,to plead humbly in the name of the roman people for peace, and to promise acquiescence atsome future day in the most unreasonable of his demands, attila granted the ambassadorsan interview by the banks of the mincio, listened with haughty tranquillity to their petition,allowed himself to be soothed and, as it were, magnetised by the words and gestures of thevenerable pontiff, accepted the rich presents which were doubtless laid at his feet, andturning his face homewards recrossed the julian alps, leaving the apennines untraversed androme unvisited. even in the act of granting peace attila usedwords which showed that it would be only a truce, and that (452) if there were any failureto abide by any one of his conditions, he
would return and work yet greater mischiefto italy than any which she had yet suffered at his hands. but he had missed the fatefulmoment, and the delight of standing on the conquered palatine, and seeing the smoke ascendfrom the ruined city of the world, was never to be his. in the year after his invasionof italy he died suddenly at night, apparently the victim of the drunken debauch with whichthe polygamous barbarian had celebrated the latest addition to the numerous company ofhis wives. with attila's death the might of the hunnishempire was broken. the great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robberto hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons who emergedfrom the chambers of his harem was able to
exert. unable to agree as to the successionof the throne, they talked of dividing the hunnish dominions between them, and in thediscussions which ensued they showed too plainly that they looked upon the subject nationsas their slaves, to be partitioned as a large household of such domestics would be partitionedamong the heirs of their dead master. the pride of the teutons was touched, and theydetermined to strike a blow for the recovery of their lost freedom. ardaric, king of thegepidã¦, so long the trusty counsellor of attila, was prime mover in the revolt againsthis sons. a battle was fought by the banks of the river nedao between the huns (withthose subject allies who still remained faithful to them) and the revolted nations.
among these revolted nations there can bebut little doubt that the ostrogoths held a high place, though the matter is not soclearly stated as we should have expected, by the gothic historian, and even on his showingthe glory of the struggle for independence was mainly ardaric's. after a terrible battlethe gepid㦠were victorious, and ellak, eldest son of attila, with, it is said, thirty thousandof his soldiers, lay dead upon the field. "he had wrought a great slaughter of his enemies,and so glorious was his end", says jordanes, "that his father might well have envied himhis manner of dying". the battle of nedao, whatever may have beenthe share of the ostrogoths in the actual fighting, certainly brought them freedom.from this time the great hunnish empire was
at an end, and there was a general resettlementof territory among the nations which had been subject to its yoke. while the huns themselves,abandoning their former habitations, moved, for the most part, down the danube, and becamethe humble servants of the eastern empire, the gepidã¦, perhaps marching southward occupiedthe great hungarian plains on the left bank of the danube, which had been the home ofattila and his huns; and the ostrogoths going westwards (perhaps with some dim notion offollowing their visigothic kindred) took up their abode in that which had once been theroman province of pannonia, now doubtless known to be hopelessly lost to the empire. pannonia, the new home of the ostrogoths,was the name of a region, rectangular in shape,
about two hundred miles from north to southand one hundred and sixty miles from east to west, whose northern and eastern sideswere washed by the river danube, and whose north-eastern corner was formed by the suddenbend to the south which that river makes, a little above buda-pest. this region includesvienna and the eastern part of the archduchy of austria, grã¤tz, and the eastern part ofthe duchy of styria, but it is chiefly composed of the great corn-growing plain of westernhungary, and contains the two considerable lakes of balaton and neusiedler see. herethen the three ostrogothic brethren took up their abode, and of this province they madea kind of rude partition between them, while still treating it as one kingdom, of whichwalamir was the head. the precise details
of this division of territory cannot now berecovered, nor are they of much importance, as the settlement was of short duration. wecan only say that walamir and theudemir occupied the two ends of the territory, and widemirdwelt between them. what is most interesting to us is the fact that theudemir's territoryincluded lake balaton (or platten see), and that his palace may very possibly have stoodupon the shores of that noble piece of water, which is forty-seven miles in length and variesfrom three to nine miles in width. to the neighbourhood of this lake, in the absenceof more precise information, we may with some probability assign the birth-place and thechildish home of theodoric. chapter iii.theodoric's boyhood.
the ostrogoths had yet one or two battlesto fight before they were quite rid of their old masters. the sons of attila still talkedof them as deserters and fugitive slaves, and a day came when walamir found himselfcompelled to face a sudden inroad of the huns. he had few men with him, and being taken unawares,he had no time to summon his brethren to his aid. but he held his own bravely: the warriorsof his nation had time to gather round him; and at last, after he had long wearied theenemy with his defensive tactics, he made a sudden onset, destroyed the greater partof the hunnish army, and sent the rest scattered in hopeless flight far into the deserts ofscythia. walamir at once sent tidings of the victoryto his brother theudemir. the messenger arrived
at an opportune moment, for on that very dayerelieva, the unwedded wife of theudemir, had given birth to a man-child. this infant,born on such an auspicious day and looked upon as a pledge of happy fortunes for theostrogothic nation, was named thiuda-reiks (the people-ruler), a name which latin historians,influenced perhaps by the analogy of theodosius, changed into theodoricus, and which will herebe spoken of under the well-known form theodoric. it will be observed that i have spoken oferelieva as the unwedded wife of theudemir. the gothic historian calls her his concubine,but this word of reproach hardly does justice to her position. in many of the teutonic nations,as among the norsemen of a later century, there seems to have been a certain laxityas to the marriage rite, which was nevertheless
coincident with a high and pure morality.it has been suggested that the severe conditions imposed by the church on divorces may havehad something to do with the peculiar marital usages of the teutonic and norse chieftains.reasons of state might require theudemir the ostrogoth, or william longsword the norman,to ally himself some day with a powerful king's daughter, and therefore he would not go throughthe marriage rite with the woman, really and truly his wife, but generally his inferiorin social position, who meanwhile governed his house and bore him children. if the separationnever came, and the powerful king's daughter never had to be wooed, she who was wife inall but name, retained her position unquestioned till her death, and her children succeededwithout dispute to the inheritance of their
father. the nearest approach to an illustrationwhich the social usages of modern europe afford, is probably furnished by the "morganatic marriages"of modern german royalties and serenities: and we might say that theodoric was the offspringof such an union. notwithstanding the want of strict legitimacy in his position, i donot remember any occasion on which the taunt of bastard birth was thrown in his teeth,even by the bitterest of his foes. it would be satisfactory if we could fix withexactness the great ostrogoth's birth-year, but though several circumstances point to454 as a probable date, we are not able to define it with greater precision. the next event of which we are informed inthe history of the ostrogothic nation, a war
with the eastern empire, was one destinedto exert a most important influence on the life of the kingly child, the ostrogoths settlingin pannonia, one of the provinces of the roman empire, were in theory allies and auxiliarysoldiers of the emperor. similar arrangements had been made with the visigoths in spain,with the vandals in that very province of pannonia, probably with many other barbariantribes in many other provinces. there was sometimes more, sometimes less, actual truthin the theoretical relations thus established, and it was one which in the nature of thingswas not likely long to endure: but for the time, so long as the imperial treasury wastolerably full and the barbarian allies tolerably amenable to control, the arrangement suitedboth parties. in the case before us the position
of the ostrogoths in pannonia was legalisedby the alliance, and such portions of the political machinery of the empire as mightstill remain were thereby placed at their disposal. the emperor, on the other hand,was able to boast of a province recovered for the empire, which was now guarded by thebroadswords of his loyal ostrogoths against the more savage nations outside, who wereever trying to enter the charmed circle of the roman state. but as the ostrogothic få“deratiwere his soldiers, there was evidently a necessity that he must send them pay, and this pay,which was called wages when the empire was strong, and tribute when it was weak, consisted,partly at any rate, of heavy chests of imperial aurei, sent as strenae or new year's presents,to the barbarian king and his chief nobles.
now, about the year 461, the emperor leo (successorof the brave soldier marcian), whether from a special emptiness in the imperial treasuryor from some other cause, omitted to send the accustomed strenae to the ostrogothicbrother-kings. much disturbed at the failure of the aurei to appear, they sent envoys toconstantinople, who returned with tidings which filled the three palaces of pannoniawith the clamour of angry men. not only were the strenae withheld, and likely to be stillwithheld, but there was another goth, a low-born pretender, not of amal blood, who was boastingof the title of få“deratus of the empire, and enjoying the strenae which ought to comeonly to amal kings and their nobles. this man, who was destined to cross the path ofour theodoric through many weary years, was
named like him theodoric, and was surnamedstrabo (the squinter) from his devious vision, and son of triarius, from his parentage. hewas brother-in-law, or nephew, of a certain aspar, a successful barbarian, who had mountedhigh in the imperial service and had placed two emperors on the throne. it was doubtlessthrough his kinsman's influence that the squinting adventurer had obtained a position in thecourt of the roman augustus so disproportioned to his birth, and so outrageous to every loyalostrogoth. when the news of these insults to the lineageof the amals reached pannonia, the three brothers in fury snatched up their arms and laid wastealmost the whole province of illyricum. then the emperor changed his mind, and desiredto renew the old friendship. he sent an embassy
bearing the arrears of the past-due strenae,those which were then again falling due, and a promise that all future strenae should bepunctually paid. only, as a hostage for the observance of peace he desired that theudemir'slittle son, theodoric, then just entering his eighth year, should be sent to constantinople.the fact that this request or demand was made by the ostensibly beaten side, may make usdoubt whether the humiliation of the empire was so complete as the preceding sentences(translated from the words of the gothic historian) would lead us to suppose. theudemir was reluctant to part with his first-bornson, even to the great roman emperor. but his brother walamir earnestly besought himnot to interpose any hindrance to the establishment
of a firm peace between the romans and goths.he yielded therefore, and the little lad, carried by the returning ambassadors to constantinople,soon earned the favour of the emperor by his handsome face and his winning ways. thus was the young ostrogoth brought fromhis home in pannonia, by the banks of lonely lake balaton, to the new rome, the busy andstately city by the bosphorus, the city which was now, more truly than her worn and fadedmother by the tiber, the "lady of kingdoms" the "mistress of the world". of the constantinoplewhich the boyish eyes of theodoric beheld, scarcely a vestige now remains for the travellerto gaze upon. let us try, therefore, to find a contemporary description. these are thewords in which the visit of the gothic chief
athanaric to that city about eighty yearspreviously is described by jordanes: "entering the royal city, and marvelling thereat,'lo! now i behold,' said he, 'what i often heard of without believing, the glory of sogreat a city.' then turning his eyes this way and that, beholding the situation of thecity and the concourse of ships, now he marvels at the long perspective of lofty walls, thenhe sees the multitudes of various nations like the wave gushing forth from one fountainwhich has been fed by divers springs, then he beholds the marshalled ranks of the soldiery.'a god,' said he, 'without doubt a god upon earth is the emperor of this realm, and whosolifts his hand against him, that man's blood be on his own head"
still can we behold "the situation of thecity", that unrivalled situation which no map can adequately explain, but which thetraveller gazes upon from the deck of his vessel as he rounds seraglio point, and thesight of which seems to bind together in one, two continents of space and twenty-five centuriesof time. on his right hand asia with her camels, on his left europe with her railroads. behindhim are the sea of marmora and the dardanelles, with their memories of lysander and ã†gospotami,of hero, leander, and byron, with the throne of xerxes and the tomb of achilles, and fartherback still the island-studded archipelago, the true cradle of the greek nation. immediatelyin front of him is the golden horn, now bridged and with populous cities on both its banks,but the farther shore of which, where pera
and galata now stand, was probably coveredwith fields and gardens when theodoric beheld it. there also in front of him, but a littleto the right, comes rushing down the impetuous bosphorus, that river which is also an armof the sea. lined now with the marble palaces of bankrupt sultans, it was once a lonelyand desolate strait, on whose farther shore the hapless io, transformed into a heifer,sought a refuge from her heaven-sent tormentor. up through its difficult windings pressedthe adventurous mariners of miletus in those early voyages which opened up the euxine tothe greeks, as the voyage of columbus opened up the atlantic to the spaniards. it is impossiblenow to survey the beautiful panorama without thinking of that great inland sea which, aswe all know, begins but a few miles to the
north of the place where we are standing,and whose cloudy shores are perhaps concealing in their recesses the future lords of constantinople.we look towards that point of the compass, and think of sebastopol. the great lords oftheudemir's court, who brought the young theodoric to his new patron, may have looked northwardstoo, remembering the sagas about the mighty hermanric, who dwelt where now the russiansdwell, and the fateful march of the terrible huns across the shallows of the sea of azof. the great physical features of the scene areof course unchanged, but almost everything else, how changed by four centuries and ahalf of ottoman domination! the first view of stamboul, with its mosques, its minarets,its latticed houses, its stream of manifold
life both civilised and barbarous, flowingthrough the streets, is delightful to the traveller; but if he be more of an archaeologistthan an artist, and seeks to reproduce before his mind's eye something of the constantinopleof the cã¦sars rather than the stamboul of the sultans, he will experience a bitter disappointmentin finding how little of the former is left. he may still see indeed the land-ward wallsof the city, and a most interesting historical relic they are. they stretch for about fourmiles, from the sea of marmora to the golden horn. it is still, comparatively speaking,all city inside of them, all country on the outside. there is a double line of walls withtowers at frequent intervals, some square, some octagonal, and deep fosses running alongbeside the walls, now in spring often bright
green with growing corn. these walls and towers,seen stretching up hill and down dale, are a very notable feature in the landscape, andruinous and dismantled as they are after fourteen centuries of siege, of earthquake, and ofneglect, they still help us vividly to imagine what they must have looked like when the youngtheodoric beheld them little more than ten years after their erection. of the gates, some six or seven in number,two are especially interesting to us. the first is the tep-kapou (cannon gate), or portasancti romani. this was the weakest part of the fortifications of constantinople, the"heel of achilles", as it has been well called, and here the last roman emperor of the east,constantine palaeologus, died bravely in the
breach for the cause of christianity and civilisation,the other gate is the porta aurea, a fine triple gateway, the centre arch of which restson two corinthian pilasters. through this gateway--the nearest representative of thecapitoline hill at rome--the eastern emperors rode in triumphant procession when a new augustushad to be proclaimed, or when an enemy of the republic had been defeated. it is possiblethat theodoric may have seen anthemius, the emperor whom constantinople gave to rome,ride forth through this gate (467) to take possession of the western throne: possibletoo that the great but unsuccessful expedition planned by the joint forces of the east andwest against the vandals of africa may have had its ignominious failure hidden from thepeople for a time by a triumphal procession
through the golden gate in the following year(468). this gate is now walled up, and tradition says that the order for its closure was givenby mohammed, the conqueror, immediately after his entry into the city, through fear of anold turkish prophecy, which declared that through this gate the next conquerors shouldenter constantinople. of the palace of the emperor, into which theyoung goth was ushered by the eunuch-chamberlain, no vestige probably now remains. the seragliohas replaced the palation, and is itself now abandoned to loneliness and decay, being onlythe recipient of one annual visit from the sultan, when he goes in state to kiss thecloak of mohammed. the great mosque of st. sophia on the right is a genuine and a gloriousmonument of imperial constantinople, but not
of constantinople as theodoric saw it. thebasilica, in which he probably listened with childish bewilderment to many a sermon foror against the decrees of the council of chalcedon, was burnt down sixty years after his visitin the great insurrection of the "nika", and the noble edifice in which ten thousand mussulmansnow assemble to listen to the reading of the koran, while above them the arabic names ofthe companions of the prophet replace the mosaics of the evangelists, is itself thework of the great emperor justinian, the destroyer of the state which theodoric founded. but almost between the church of st. sophiaand the imperial palace lay in old times the great hippodrome, centre of the popular lifeof the capital, where the excited multitudes
cheered with rapture, or howled in execration,at the victory of the blue or the green charioteer; where many a time the elevation or the depositionof an emperor was accomplished by the acclamations of the same roaring throng. of this hippodromewe have still a most interesting memorial in the atmeidan (the place of horses), which,though with diminished area, still preserves something of the form of the old racecourse.and here to this day are two monuments on which the young hostage may have often gazed,wondering at their form and meaning. the obelisk of thothmes i., already two thousand yearsold when constantinople was founded, was reared in the hippodrome, by order of the great emperortheodosius, and some of the bas-reliefs on its pedestal still explain to us the mechanicaldevices by which it was lifted into position,
while in others theodosius, his wife, hissons, and his colleague sit in solemn state, but, alas! with grievously mutilated countenances.near it is a spiral column of bronze which, almost till our own day, bore three serpentstwined together, whose heads long ago supported a golden tripod. this bronze monument is noneother than the votive offering to the temple of apollo at delphi, presented by the confederatedstates of greece, to celebrate the victory of platã¦a. the golden tripod was melted downat the time of philip of macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by constantine toadorn and hallow his new capital by the bosphorus, bore and still bear the names, written inarchaic characters, of all the hellenic states which took part in that great deliverance.
all these monuments are on the first of theseven hills on which constantinople is built. on the second hill stands a strange and blackenedpillar, which once stood in the middle of the forum of constantine; and this too wasthere in the days of theodoric. it is called the burnt column, because it has been morethan once struck by lightning, and is blackened with the smoke of the frequent fires whichhave consumed the wooden shanties at its base. but "there it stands, as stands a lofty mind, worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd". it was once 150 feet high, but is now 115,and it consists of six huge cylinders of porphyry,
one above another, whose junction is veiledby sculptured laurel wreaths. on its summit stood the statue of constantine with the garband attributes of the grecian sun-god, but having his head surrounded with the nailsof the true cross, brought from jerusalem to serve instead of the golden rays of far-dartingapollo. underneath the column was placed (and remains probably to this day) the palladium,that mysterious image of minerva, which ã†neas carried from troy to alba longa, which hisdescendants removed to rome, and which was now brought by constantine to his new capital,so near to its first legendary home, to be the pledge of abiding security to the cityby the bosphorus. these are the chief relics of constantinoplein the fifth century which are still visible
to the traveller. i have described with somelittle detail the outward appearance of the city and its monuments, because these wouldnaturally be the objects which would most attract the attention of a child brought fromsuch far different scenes into the midst of so stately a city. but during the ten or elevenyears that theodoric remained in honourable captivity at the court of leo, while he wasgrowing up from childhood to manhood, it cannot be doubted that he gradually learned the deeperlessons which lay below the glory and the glitter of the great city's life, and thatthe knowledge thus acquired in those years which are so powerful in moulding character,had a mighty influence on all his subsequent career.
he saw here for the first time, and by degreeshe apprehended, the results of that state of civilitas which in after years he was tobe constantly recommending to his people. sprung from a race of hunters and shepherds,having slowly learned the arts of agriculture, and then perhaps partly unlearned them underthe over-lordship of the nomad huns, the ostrogoths at this time knew nothing of a city life.a city was probably in their eyes little else than a hindrance to their freebooting raids,a lair of enemies, a place behind whose sheltering walls, so hard to batter down, cowards lurkedin order to sally forth at a favourable moment and attack brave men in their rear. at bestit was a treasure-house, which valiant goths, if fortune favoured them, might sack and plunder:but fortune seldom did favour the children
of gaut in their assaults upon the fencedcities of the empire. now, however, the lad theodoric began to perceive,as the man ataulfus had perceived before him, that the city life upon which all the proverbsand the songs of his countrymen poured contempt, had its advantages. to the new rome came theincessant ships of alexandria, bringing corn for the sustenance of her citizens. long caravansjourneyed over the highlands of asia minor loaded with the spices and jewels of indiaand the silks of china. men of every conceivable asiatic country were drawn by the irresistibleattraction of hoped-for profit to the quays and the fora of byzantium. the scattered homesteadsof the ostrogothic farmers had no such wonderful power of drawing men over thousands of milesof land and sea to visit them. then the bright
and varied life of the imperial city couldnot fail to fill the boy's soul with pleasure and admiration. the thrill of excitement inthe hippodrome as the two charioteers, green and blue, rounded the spina, neck and neck,the tragedies acted in the theatre amid rapturous applause, the strange beasts from every partof the roman world that roared and fought in the amphitheatre, the delicious idlenessof the baths, the chatter and bargaining and banter of the forum,--all this made a dayin beautiful constantinople very unlike a day in the solemn and somewhat rude palaceby lake balaton. as the boy grew to manhood, the deep underlyingcause of this difference perhaps became clearer to his mind. he could see more or less plainlythat the soul which held all this marvellous
body of civilisation together was reverencefor law. he visited perhaps some of the courts of law; he may have seen the illustrious prã¦torianprefect, clothed in imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid theobsequious salutations of the dignified officials, who in their various ranks and orders surroundedthe hall. the costly golden reed-case, the massive silver inkstand, the silver bowl forthe petitions of suitors, all emblems of his office, were placed solemnly before him, andthe pleadings began. practised advocates arose to plead the cause of plaintiff or defendant;busy short-hand writers took notes of the proceedings; at length in calm and measuredwords the prefect gave his judgment; a judgment which was necessarily based on law, whichhad to take account of the sayings of jurisconsults,
of the stored-up wisdom of twenty generationsof men; a judgment which, notwithstanding the venality which was the curse of the empire,was in most instances in accordance with truth and justice. how different, must theodoricoften have thought, in after years, when he had returned to gothland,--how different wasthis settled and orderly procedure from the usage of the barbarians. with them the "blood-feud",the "wild justice of revenge", often prolonged from generation to generation, had been longthe chief righter of wrongs done; and if this was now slowly giving place to judicial trial,that trial was probably a coarse and almost lawless proceeding, in which the head manof the district, with a hundred assessors, as ignorant as himself, amid the wild criesof the opposed parties, roughly fixed the
amount of blood-money to be paid by a murderer,or decided at hap-hazard, often with an obvious reference to the superior force at the commandof one or other of the litigants, some obscure dispute as to the ownership of a slave orthe right to succeed to a dead man's inheritance. law carefully thought out, systematised, andin the main softened and liberalised, from generation to generation, was the great giftof the roman empire to the world, and by her strong, and uniform, and, in the main, justadministration of this law, that empire had kept, and in the days of theodoric was stillkeeping, her hold upon a hundred jarring nationalities. what hope was there that the german intrudersinto the lands of the mediterranean could ever vie with this great achievement? yetif they could not, if it was out of their
power to reform and reinvigorate the shatteredstate, if they could only destroy and not rebuild, they would exert no abiding influenceon the destinies of europe. i do not say that all these thoughts passedat this time through the mind of theodoric, but i have no doubt that the germs of themwere sown by his residence in constantinople. when he returned, a young man of eighteenyears and of noble presence to the palace of his father, he had certainly some conceptionof what the greeks meant when he heard them talking about politeia, some foreshadowingof what he himself would mean when in after days he should speak alike to his goth androman subjects of the blessings of civilitas. chapter iv.the southward migration.
the young theodoric, who was now in his nineteenthyear, was sent back by leo to his father with large presents, and both the recovered sonand the tokens of imperial favour brought joy to the heart of the father. there hadbeen some changes in the ostrogothic kingdom during the boy's absence. there had been vagueand purposeless wars with the savage nations around them,--swabians, sarmatians, scyri--besidesone final encounter with their old lords, the huns. these last, we are told, they haddriven forth so hopelessly beaten from their territory, that for a century from that timeall that was left of the hunnish nation trembled at the very name of the goths. but in a battlewith another people of far less renown, the barbarous scyri beyond the danube, walamir,while cheering on his men to the combat, was
thrown from his horse and being pierced bythe lances of the enemy was left dead on the field. his death, it is said, was avengedmost ruthlessly on the scyri, and theudemir, the brother who was next him in age, becamechief king of the ostrogoths. scarcely had theodoric returned to his homewhen, without communicating his purpose to his father, he distinguished himself by agallant deed of arms. on the south-east of the ostrogothic kingdom, in the country whichwe now call servia, there reigned at this time a sclavonic chief called babai, who wasfull of pride and self-importance because of a victory which he had lately gained overthe forces of the empire. theodoric had probably heard at constantinople the other side ofthis story: on his journey to the north-west
he had passed through those regions, and markedthe pride of the insolent barbarian. sympathy with the humiliated empire, but, far more,the young warrior's desire at once to find "a foeman worthy of his steel", and to winlaurels for himself wherewith he might surprise his father, drove him into his new enterprise.having collected some of his father's guardsmen, and those of his people with whom he was personallypopular, or who were dependent upon him, he thus mustered a little army of six thousandmen, with whom he crossed the danube. falling suddenly upon king babai, he defeated andslew him, took his family prisoners,and returned with large booty in slaves and the rude wealthof the barbarian to his surprised but joyful father. the result of this expedition wasthe capture of the important frontier city
of singidunum (whose site is now occupiedby belgrade), a city which babai had wrested from the empire, but which theodoric, whatevermay have been his inclination to favour constantinople, did not deem it necessary to restore to hislate host. this incident of the early manhood of theodoricis a good illustration of the teutonic custom which tacitus describes to us under the nameof the comitatus, a custom which was therefore at least four centuries old (probably farolder) in the days of theodoric, and which, lasting on for several centuries longer, undoubtedlyinfluenced if it did not actually create the chivalry of the middle ages. the custom wasso important that it will be better to translate the very words of tacitus concerning it, thoughthey occur in one of the best-known passages
of the "germania". "the germans transact no business either ofa public or private nature except with arms in their hands. but it is not the practicefor any one to begin the wearing of arms until the state has approved his ability to wieldthem. when that is done, in the great council of the nation one of the chiefs, perhaps thefather or some near relation of the candidate, equips the youth with shield and spear. thisis with them like the toga virilis with us, the first dignity bestowed on the young man.before this he was looked upon as part of his father's household--now he is a memberof the state. eminently noble birth, or great merit on the part of their fathers, assignsthe dignity of a chief even to very young
men. they are admitted to the fellowship ofother youths stronger than themselves, and already tried in war, nor do they blush tobe seen among the henchmen. there is a gradation in rank among the henchmen, determined bythe judgment of him whom they follow, and there is a great emulation among the henchmen,who shall have the highest place under the chief, and among the chiefs who shall havethe most numerous and the bravest henchmen. this is their dignity, this their strength,to be ever surrounded by a band of chosen youths, an honour in peace, a defence in battle.and not only in his own nation, but among the surrounding states also, each chief'sname and glory are spread abroad according to the eminence of his 'train of henchmen'in number and valour. chiefs thus distinguished
are in request for embassies, are enrichedwith costly presents, and often they decide a war by the mere terror of their name". "when they stand on the battle-field, it isheld a disgraceful thing for the chief to be surpassed in bravery by his henchmen, forthe henchmen not to equal the valour of their chief. now too it will mark a man as infamous,and a target for the scorn of men for all the rest of his life, if he escapes alivefrom the battle-field where his chief needed his help. to defend him, the chief; to guardhis person; to reckon up one's own brave deeds as enhancing his glory: this is the henchman'sone great oath of fealty. the chiefs fight for victory, the henchmen for their chief.if the state in which they are born should
be growing sluggish through ease and a longpeace, most of the noble young men seek of their own accord those nations which are thenwaging war, both because a quiet life is hateful to this people, and because they can moreeasily distinguish themselves in perilous times, nor can they keep together a greattrain of henchmen, except by war and the strong hand. for it is from the generosity of theirchief that each henchman expects that mighty war-horse which he would bestride, that goryand victorious spear, which he would brandish. banquets, too, and all the rough but plentifulappliances of the feast are taken as part of the henchman's pay; and the means of supplyingall this prodigality must be sought by war and rapine. you would not so easily persuadethem to plough the fields and wait in patience
for a year's harvest, as to challenge an enemyand earn honourable wounds; since to them it seems always a slow and lazy process toaccumulate by the sweat of your brow what you might win at once by the shedding of blood". these words of tacitus, written in the year98 after christ, describe with wonderful exactness the state of ostrogothic society in the year472. we are not expressly told of theodoric's assumption of the shield and spear in thegreat council of the nation, but probably this ceremony immediately followed his returnfrom constantinople. then we see the gathering together of the band of henchmen, the suddenmarch away from the peaceful land, growing torpid through two or three years of warlessness,the surprise of the sclavonic king, the copious
effusion of blood which was the preferredalternative to the sweat of the land-tiller, the return to the young chief's own land withspoils sufficient to support perhaps for many months the "generosity" expected by the henchmen. there is one point, however, in which thedescription of the germans given by tacitus is probably not altogether applicable to thegoths of the fifth century: and that is, their invincible preference for the life of thewarrior over that of the agriculturist. there are some indications that the germans, whentacitus wrote, had not long exchanged the nomadic life of a nation of shepherds andherdsmen (such as was led by the earlier generations of the israelitish people) for the settledlife which alone is consistent with the pursuits
of the tiller of the soil. hence the rovinginstinct was still strong within them, and this roving instinct easily allied itselfwith the thirst for battle and the love of the easy gains of the freebooter. four centuries,however, of agriculture and of neighbourhood to the great civilised stable empire of romehad apparently wrought some change in the goths and in many of the other teutonic nations.the work of agriculture was now not altogether odious in their eyes; they knew somethingof the joys of the husbandman as well as of the joys of the warrior; they began to feelsomething of that "land-hunger" which is the passion of a young, growing, industrious people.still, however, the songs of the minstrels, the sagas of the bards, the fiery impulsesof the young princeps surrounded by his comitatus
pointed to war as the only occupation worthyof freemen. hence we can perceive a double current in the ambitions of these nationswhich often perplexes the historian now, as it evidently then perplexed their mighty neighbour,the roman augustus, and the generals and lawyers who counselled him in his consistory. sometimesthe teutonic king is roused by some real or imagined insult; the minstrels sing theirbattle-songs; the fiery henchmen gather round their chief; the barbarian tide rolls overthe frontier of the empire: it seems as if it must be a duel to the death between civilisationand its implacable foes. then suddenly "he sinks to ashes who was very fire before".
food, not glory, seems to be the supreme objectof the teuton's ambition. he begs for land, for seed to sow in it, for a legal settlementwithin the limits of the empire. if only these necessary things are granted to him, he promises,and not without intending to keep his promise, to be a peaceable subject, yes and a staunchdefender, of the roman augustus. had the imperial statesmen truly understood this strange dualityof purpose in the minds of their barbarian visitors, and had they set themselves loyallyand patiently to foster the peaceful agricultural instincts of the teuton, haply the roman empiremight still be standing. as it was, the statesmen of the day, men of temporary shifts and expedients,living only as we say "from hand to mouth", saw, in the changing moods of the germans,only the faithlessness of barbarism, which
they met with the faithlessness of civilisation,and between the two the empire--which no one really wished to destroy--was destroyed. even such a change it was which now came overthe minds of the ostrogothic people. there was dearth in pannonia, partly, perhaps, theconsequence of the frequent wars with the surrounding nations which had occurred duringthe twenty years of the ostrogothic settlement. but even the cessation of those wars broughtwith it a loss of income to the warrior class. as the gothic historian expresses it: "fromthe diminution of the spoils of the neighbouring nations the goths began to lack food and clothing,and to those men to whom war had long furnished all their sustenance peace began to be odious,and all the goths with loud shouts approached
their king theudemir praying him to lead hisarmy whither he would, but to lead it forth to war". here again it can hardly be doubted that jordanes,writing about the fifth century, describes for us the same state of things as tacituswriting about the first, and that this loudly shouted demand of the people for war was expressedin one of those national assemblies--the "folc-motes" or "folc-things" of anglo-saxon and germanhistory--which formed such a real limitation to the power of the early teutonic kings."concerning smaller matters", says tacitus, "the chiefs deliberate; concerning greatermatters, the whole nation; but in such wise that even those things which are in the powerof the commonalty are discussed in detail
by the chiefs. they come together, unlessany sudden and accidental emergency have arisen, on fixed days determined by the new or fullmoon; for these times they deem the most fortunate for the transaction of business. an ill consequenceflowing from their freedom is their want of punctuality in assembling; often two or threedays are spent in waiting for the loiterers. when the crowd chooses, they sit down, arrayedin their armour (and commence business). silence is called for by the priests, who have thenthe power even of keeping order by force. then the king or one of the chiefs beginsto speak, and is listened to in right either of his age, or his noble birth, or his gloryin the wars, or his eloquence. in any case, he rather persuades than commands; not power,but weight of character procures the assent
of his hearers. if they mislike his sentiments they expresstheir contempt for them by groans, if they approve, they clash their spears together.applause thus expressed by arms is the greatest tribute that can be paid to a speaker". before such an assembly of the nation in arms,the question, not of peace or war? but of war with whom? was debated. it was decidedthat the empire should be the victim, and that east and west alike should feel the heavyhand of the ostrogoths. the lot was cast (so said the national legend), and it assignedto theudemir the harder but, as it seemed, more profitable task of warring against constantinople,while his younger brother widemir was to attack
rome. of widemir's movements there is little totell. he died in italy, not having apparently achieved any brilliant exploits, and his sonand namesake was easily persuaded to turn aside into gaul, where he joined his forcesto those of the kindred visigoths, and became absorbed in their flourishing kingdom. thisbranch of amal royalty henceforward bears no fruit in history. more important, at any rate in its ultimateconsequences, was the march of theudemir and his people into the dominions of the easterncã¦sar. they crossed the save, and by their warlike array terrified into acquiescencethe sclavonic tribes which were settled in
the neighbourhood of belgrade. having pushed up the valley of the morava,they captured the important city of naissus (now nisch), "the first city of illyricum".here theudemir tarried for a space, sending on his son with a large and eager comitatusfarther up the valley of the morava. they reached the head of that valley, they crossedthe watershed and the plain of kossova, and descended the valley of the vardar. monastirin macedonia, larissa in thessaly were taken and sacked; and a way having thus been madeby these bold invaders into the heart of the empire, a message was sent to theudemir, invitinghim to undertake the siege of thessalonica. leaving a few guards in naissus, the old kingmoved southward with the bulk of his army,
and was soon standing with his men beforethe walls of the macedonian capital. the patrician hilarianus held that city with a strong force,but when he saw it regularly invested by the goths and an earthen rampart drawn all roundit, he lost heart, and, despairing of a successful resistance, opened negotiations with the besiegers.the result of these negotiations (accompanied by handsome presents to the king) was thattheudemir abandoned the siege, resumed the often adopted, perhaps never wholly abandoned,position of a få“deratus or sworn auxiliary of the empire, and received for himself andhis people the unquestioned possession of six towns and the surrounding country by thenorth-east corner of the ã†gean, where the vardar discharges itself into the thermaicgulf.
thus ingloriously, thus unprofitably endedthe expedition into romania, which had been proposed amid such enthusiastic applause atthe great council of the nation, and pressed with such loud acclamations and such brandishingof defiant spears upon the perhaps reluctant theudemir. the ostrogoths in 472 were an independentpeople, practically supreme in pannonia. those broad lands on the south and west of the danube,rich in corn and wine, the very kernel of the austrian monarchy of to-day, were theirsin absolute possession. any tie of nominal dependence which attached pannonia to theempire was so merely theoretical, now that the hun had ruled and ravaged it for a goodpart of a century, that it was not worth taking into consideration; it was in fact ratheran excuse for claiming stipendia from the
emperor than a bond of real vassalage. butnow in 474 this great and proud nation, crowded into a few cities of macedonia, with obedientsubjects of the empire all round them, had practically no choice between the life ofpeaceful provincials on the one hand and that of freebooters on the other. if they acceptedthe first, they would lose year by year something of their old national character. the teutonicspeech, the teutonic customs would gradually disappear, and in one or two generations theywould be scarcely distinguishable from any of the other oppressed, patient, tax-exhaustedpopulations of the great and weary empire. on the other hand, if they accepted (whichin fact they seem to have done) the other alternative, and became a mere horde of plundererswandering up and down through the empire,
seeking what they might destroy, they abandonedthe hope of forming a settled and stable monarchy, and, doing injustice to the high qualitiesand capacities for civilisation which were in them, they would sink lower into the depthsof barbarism, and becoming like the hun, like the hun they would one day perish. certainly,so far, the tumultuous decision of the parliament on the shores of lake pelso was a false stepin the nation's history. chapter v.storm and stress. the imagination of a boy is healthy, and themature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in whichthe soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted".--(keats,preface to "endymion".)
the sentence thus written by the sensitiveyoung poet, a child of london of the nineteenth century, was eminently exemplified in thehistory of the martial chief of the ostrogoths. the next fourteen years in the life of theodoric,which will be described in this chapter, were years of much useless endeavour, of marchesand countermarches, of alliances formed and broken, of vain animosities and vainer reconciliations,years in which theodoric himself seems never to understand his own purpose, whether itshall be under the shadow of the empire or upon the ruins of the empire, that he willbuild up his throne. take the map of what is now often called "the balkan peninsula",the region in which these fourteen years were passed; look at the apparently purpose, lessway in which the mountain ranges of hã¦mus,
rhodope, and scardus cross, intersect, runparallel, approach, avoid one another; look at the strange entanglement of passes andwatersheds and table-lands which their systems display to us. even such as the ranges amongwhich he was manå“uvring--perplexed, purposeless, and sterile--was the early manhood of theodoric. about 474, soon after the great southwardmigration, theudemir died at cyrrhus in macedonia, one of the new settlements of the ostrogoths.when he was attacked by his fatal sickness he called his people together and pointedto theodoric as the heir of his royal dignity. kingship at this time among the germanic nationswas not purely hereditary, the consent of the people being required even in the mostordinary and natural cases of succession,
such as that of a first-born son, full grownand a tried soldier succeeding to an aged father. in such cases, however, that consentwas almost invariably given. theodoric, at any rate, succeeded without disputes to thedoubtful and precarious position of king of the ostrogoths. almost at the same time a change was beingmade by death in the wearer of the imperial diadem. in order to illustrate the widelydifferent character of the roman and the gothic monarchies it will be well to cease for alittle time to follow the fortunes of theodoric and to sketch the history of leo, the dyingemperor, and of zeno, who succeeded him. leo i., who reigned at constantinople from457 to 474, and who was therefore emperor
during the whole time that theodoric dweltthere as hostage, was not, as far as we can ascertain, a man of any great abilities inpeace or war, or originally of very exalted station. but he was "curator" or steward inthe household of aspar, the successful barbarian adventurer who has been already alluded to.as an arian by religion, and a barbarian, or the son of a barbarian, by birth, asparcould not himself assume the diadem, but he could give it to whom he would, and leo thesteward was the second of his dependants whom he had thus honoured. once placed upon thethrone, however, leo showed himself less obsequious to his old master than was expected. the postof prefect of the city became vacant; aspar suggested for the office a man who, like himself,was tainted with the heresy of arius. at the
moment leo promised acquiescence, but immediatelyrepented, and in the dead of night privately conferred the important office on a senatorwho professed the orthodox faith. aspar in a rage laid a rough hand on the imperial purple,saying to leo: "emperor! it is not fitting that one who wears this robe should tell lies".leo answered with some spirit: "neither is it fitting that an emperor should be boundto do the bidding of any of his subjects, and so injure the state". after this encounter there were thirteen yearsof feud between king-maker and king, between aspar and leo. at length in 471 aspar andhis three valiant sons fell by the swords of the eunuchs of the palace. the foul andcowardly deed was perhaps marked by some circumstances
of especial cruelty, which earned for leothe title by which he was long after remembered in constantinople, "the butcher". in order to strengthen himself against theadherents of aspar, leo cultivated the friendship of a set of wild, uncouth mountaineers, whoat this time played the same part in constantinople which the swiss of the middle ages playedin italy. these were the isaurians, men from the rugged highlands of pisidia, whose liveshad hitherto been chiefly spent either in robbing or in defending themselves from robbery.at their head was a man named tarasicodissa,--probably well born, if a chieftain from the isaurianhighlands could be deemed to be well born by the contemptuous citizens of constantinople,no soldier, for we are told that even the
picture of a battle frightened him, but aman whom the other isaurians seem to have followed with clannish loyalty, like thatwhich the scottish camerons showed even to the wily and unwarlike master of lovat. with tarasicodissa therefore the emperor leoentered into a compact of mutual defence. the isaurian dropped his uncouth name andassumed the classical and philosophical-sounding name of zeno; he received the hand of ariadne,daughter of the emperor, in marriage, and as leo had no male offspring, the little leo,offspring of this marriage and therefore grandson of the aged emperor, was, in this monarchywhich from elective was ever becoming more strictly hereditary, generally accepted ashis probable successor.
as it had been planned so it came to pass.leo the butcher died (3d feb. 474); the younger leo, a child of seven years old, was hailedby senate and people as his successor: zeno came at the head of a brilliant train of senators,soldiers, and magistrates, to "adore" the new emperor, and the child, carefully instructedby his mother in the part which he had to play, placed on the bowed head of his fatherthe imperial diadem. this act of "association" as it was called, generally practised upona son or nephew by a veteran emperor anxious to be relieved from some of the cares of reigning,required to be ratified by the acclamations of the soldiery; but no doubt these acclamations,which could generally be purchased by a sufficiently liberal donative, were not wanting on thisoccasion. zeno, otherwise called tarasicodissa
the isaurian, was now emperor, and nine monthsafter, when his child-partner died, he became sole ruler of the roman world, except in sofar as his dignity might be considered to be shared by the phantom emperors of the west,who at this time were dethroning and being dethroned with fatal rapidity at rome andravenna. thus mean and devious were the paths by whichan adventurer could climb in the fifth century to that which was still looked upon as thepinnacle of earthly greatness. for however unworthy a man might feel himself to be, andhowever unworthy all his subjects might know him to be of the highest place in the empire,when once he had obtained it his power was absolute and the honours rendered to him werelittle less than divine. all laws were passed
by his "sacred providence"; all officers,military and civil, received their authority from him. in the edicts which he put forthto the world he spoke of himself as "my eternity", "my mildness", "my magnificence", and of coursethese expressions, or, if it were possible, expressions more adulatory than these, wereused by his subjects when they laid their petitions at the footstool of "the sacredthrone". he lived, withdrawn from vulgar eyes, in the innermost recesses of the palace, asort of holy of holies behind the first and the second veil. a band of pages, in splendiddress, waited upon his bidding; thirty stately silentiarii, with helmets and brightly burnishedcuirasses, marched backwards and forwards before the second veil, to see that no importunatepetitioner disturbed the silence of "the sacred
cubicle". on the comparatively rare occasionswhen he showed himself to his subjects, he wore upon his head the diadem, a band of whitelinen, in which blazed the most precious jewels of the empire. hung round his shoulders andreaching down to his feet was that precious purple robe, for the sake of which so manycrimes were committed, and which often proved itself a very "garment of nessus" to him whodared to assume it without force sufficient to render his usurpation legitimate. on thefeet of the emperor were buskins which, like the diadem, were studded with precious stones,and like the robe were dyed with the imperial purple. thus gorgeously arrayed he took hisplace in the podium, the royal box in the amphitheatre, and from thence, while gazedupon by his subjects, gazed himself upon the
savage beast-fight, or in the hippodrome,with difficulty restraining his eagerness for the success of the blue or the green faction,gave the sign for the chariot races to begin. or he sat surrounded by his court in the purplepresence-chamber to consult upon public affairs with his consistory, a sort of privy council,composed of the great ministers of state. conspicuous among these were the fifteen officersof highest rank, generals, judges, grand chamberlains, finance ministers, who had each the rightto be addressed as "illustrious". when any subject of the emperor, were it one of theseillustrious ones himself, were it the son or brother of his predecessor, were it evena former patron, like aspar, by whose favour he had been selected to wear the purple, wasadmitted to an audience of "augustus" (that
great name went as of right with the diadem),the etiquette of the court required that he should not merely bow nor kneel, but absolutelyprostrate himself before the sacred majesty of the emperor, who, if in a gracious mood,then with outstretched hand raised him from the earth and permitted him to kiss his kneeor the fringe of his imperial mantle. to this dizzy height of greatness--for such,however small marcian or leo or zeno may now seem to us by the lapse of centuries, it wasfelt to be by the contemporary generations--it was possible under the singular combinationof election and inheritance which regulated the succession to the throne, for almost anycitizen of the empire, if not of barbarian blood or heretical creed, to aspire. diocletian,the second founder of the empire, was the
son of a slave; justinian--an even greatername--was the nephew of a macedonian peasant, who with a sheepskin bag containing a week'sstore of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his native highlands to seek hisfortune in the capital zeno, as we have seen, though perhaps better born than either diocletianor justinian, was only a little isaurian chieftain. thus the possibilities open to aspiring ambitionwere great in the empire of the cã¦sars. as any male citizen of the united states, bornbetween the st. lawrence and the rio grande, may one day be installed in the white houseas president, so any "roman" and orthodox inhabitant of the empire, whether noble, citizen,or peasant, might flatter himself with the hope that he too should one day wear the purpleof diocletian, be saluted as augustus, and
see prefects and masters of the soldiery prostratingthemselves before "his eternity". this was, in a sense, the better, the democratic sideof the roman monarchy. power which was supposed to be conveyed by the will of the people (asexpressed by the acclamations of the army) might be wielded by the arm of any memberof that people. on the other hand there was an evil in the habit thus engendered in men'sminds, of humbling themselves before mere power without regard to the manner of itsacquirement. when we compare the polity of rome or constantinople, where a century wasa long time for the duration of a dynasty, with the far simpler polities of the teutonictribes which invaded the empire, almost all of whom had their royal houses, reaching backinto and even beyond the dawn of national
history, supposed to be sprung from the loinsof the gods, and rendered illustrious by countless deeds of valour recorded in song or saga,we see at once that in these ruder states we are in presence of a principle which theempire knew not, but which mediã¦val europe knew and glorified, the principle of loyalty.this principle, the same that bound bayard to the valois, and montrose to the stuart,has been, with all the follies and even crimes which it may have caused, an element of strengthand cohesion in the states which have arisen on the ruins of the roman empire. the self-respectingbut loving loyalty, with which the englishman of to-day cherishes the name of the descendantof cerdic, of alfred, and of edward plantagenet, who wields the sceptre of his country, isutterly unlike the slavish homage offered
by the adoring courtiers of byzantium to thepinchbeck divinity of zeno tarasicodissa. raised as zeno had been to the throne by amere palace intrigue, and destitute as he was of any of the qualities of a great statesmanor general, it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen years, was continuallydisturbed by conspiracies and rebellions. in most of these rebellions his mother-in-law,verina, widow of leo, an ambitious and turbulent woman, played an important part. it was only a year after zeno's accessionto sole power by the death of his son (nov., 475) when he was surprised by the outbreakof a conspiracy, hatched by his mother-in-law, the object of which was to place her brotherbasiliscus on the throne. zeno fled by night,
still wearing the imperial robes which hehad worn, sitting in the hippodrome, when the tidings reached him, and crossing thebosphorus was soon in the heart of asia minor, safe sheltered in his native isauria. from thence,(july, 477) after nearly two yearsof exile, he was by a strange turn of the wheel of fortune restored to his throne. religiousbigotry (for basiliscus did not belong to the party of strict orthodoxy) and domesticjealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result. zeno, who had fled twenty monthsbefore from the hippodrome, returned to the amphitheatre, and there, having commandedthat the linen curtain should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing raysof the july sun, gave the signal for the games
to begin, while the populace shouted in latinthe regular official congratulations on his elevation and prayers for his continued triumph. meanwhile his fallen rival, less fortunatethan zeno himself in planning an escape, was crouching in the baptistery of the great churchof saint sophia, whither with his wife and children he had fled for refuge. after allthe emblems of imperial dignity had been rudely stripped from them, basiliscus was induced,by a promise from zeno, "that their heads should be safe", to come forth with his familyfrom the sacred asylum. the emperor "kept the word of promise to the ear", since noexecutioner with drawn sword entered the chamber of his rival. basiliscus and they that werewith him were sent away to a remote fortress
in cappadocia. the gate of the fortress wasbuilt up, a band of wild isaurians guarded the enclosure, suffering no man to enter orto leave it, and in that bleak stronghold before long the fallen emperor and empresswith their children perished miserably of cold and hunger. theodoric, who was at this time settled withhis people, not on the shores of the ã†gean, but in the region which we now call the dobrudscha,between the mouths of the danube and the black sea, had zealously espoused the cause of thebanished zeno, and lent an effectual hand in the counter-revolution which restored himto the throne (478). for his services in this crisis he was rewarded with the dignitiesof patrician and master of the soldiery, high
honours for a barbarian of twenty-four; andprobably about this time he was also adopted as "filius in arma" by the emperor. what theprecise nature of this adopted "sonship-in-arms" may have been we are not able to say. it remindsus of the barbarian customs which in the course of centuries ripened into the mediã¦val ceremonyof knighthood, and the whole transaction certainly sounds more ostrogothic than imperial. zeno'sown son and namesake (the offspring of a first marriage before his union with ariadne) wasapparently dead before this time; and possibly therefore the title of son thus conferredupon theodoric may have raised in his heart wild hopes that he too might one day be salutedas roman emperor. any such hopes were probably doomed to inevitable disappointment. any otherdignity in the state, the "roman republic",
as it still called itself, was practicallywithin reach of a powerful barbarian, but the diadem, as has been already said, couldin this age of the world, only be worn by one of pure roman, that is, non-barbarian,blood. at this time, and for the next three years,the position of our theodoric, both towards the emperor and towards his own people, wassorely embarrassed by the position and the claims of the other, the squinting theodoric(son of triarius), whom we met with seventeen years ago, and whose receipt of stipendiafrom the court of constantinople, at the very time when their own were withheld, raisedthe wrath of walamir and theudemir. this theodoric, it will be remembered, was of unkingly, perhapsof quite ignoble, birth, had risen to greatness
by clinging to the skirts of aspar, and had,so far as the emperor's favour was concerned, fallen with his fall. shortly before the deathof leo he had appeared in arms against the empire, taking one city and besieging another,and had forced the emperor to concede to him high rank in the army (that of general ofthe household troops) a subsidy of; â£80,000 a year for himself and his people, and lastlya remarkable stipulation, "that he should be absolute ruler of the goths, and that theemperor should not receive any of them who were minded to revolt from him". this strangearticle of the treaty shows us, on the one hand, how thoroughly fictitious and illegitimatewas this theodoric's claim to kinship; since assuredly neither alaric, nor ataulfus, northeudemir, nor any of the genuine kings of
the goths, ever needed to bolster up theirauthority over their subjects by any such figment of an imperial concession; and onthe other hand, as it coincides in date with the time of theudemir's and his theodoric'sentrance into the empire, it shows us the distracting influences to which the largenumber of gothic settlers south of the danube, settled there before theudemir's migration,were exposed by that event. there can be little doubt that the goths who were minded to revoltfrom the son of triarius and who were not to be received into favour by the emperor,were ostrogoths, still dimly conscious of the old tie which bound them to the glorioushouse of amala, and more than half disposed to forsake the service of their squintingupstart chief in order to follow the banners
of the young hero, son of theudemir. then came the death of leo (478), zeno's accessionand the insurrection of basiliscus, in which the son of triarius took part against theisaurian emperor. soon after this insurrection was ended and zeno was restored to his precariousthrone, there came an embassy from the få“derati (as they called themselves) that is, fromthe unattached goths who followed the triarian standard, begging zeno to be reconciled totheir lord, and hinting that he was a truer friend to the empire than the petted and pamperedson of theudemir. after a consultation with "the senate and people of rome", in otherwords, with the nobles of constantinople and the troops of the household, zeno decidedthat to take both the theodorics into his
pay would be too heavy a charge on the treasury;that there was no reason for breaking with the young amal, his ally, and therefore thatthe request of his rival must be refused. open war followed, consisting chiefly of devastatingraids by the son of triarius into the valleys of må“sia and thrace. a message was sent totheodoric the amal, who was dwelling quietly with his people by the danube. "why are youlingering in your home? come forth and do great deeds worthy of a master of roman soldiery"."but if i take the field against the son of triarius", was the answer, "i fear that youwill make peace with him behind my back". the emperor and senate bound themselves bysolemn oaths that he should never be received back into favour, and an elaborate plan ofcampaign was arranged, according to which
the amal marching with his host from marcianople,(shumla) was to be met by one general with twelve thousand troops, on the southern sideof the balkans, and by another with thirty thousand in the valley of the hebrus (maritza). but the roman empire, in its feeble and flaccidold age, seemed to have lost all capacity for making war. theodoric the amal performedhis share of the compact; but when with his weary army, encumbered with many women andchildren, he emerged from the passes of the balkans he found no imperial generals thereto meet him, but, instead, theodoric the squinter with a large army of goths encamped on aninaccessible hill. neither chief gave the signal for combat; perhaps both were restrainedby a reluctance to urge the fratricidal strife;
but there were daily skirmishes between thelight-armed horsemen at the foraging grounds and places for watering. every day, too, theson of triarius rode round the hostile camp, shouting forth reproaches against his rival,calling him "a perjured boy, a madman, a traitor to his race, a fool who could not see whitherthe imperial plans were tending. the romans would stand by and look quietly on while gothwore out goth in deadly strife". murmurs from the amal's troops showed that these wordsstruck home. next day the son of triarius climbed a hill overlooking the camp, and againraised his voice in bitter defiance. "scoundrel! why are you leading so many of my kinsmento destruction? why have you made so many gothic wives widows? what has become of thatwealth and plenty which they had when they
first took service with you? then they hadtwo or three horses apiece; now without horses and in the guise of slaves, they are wanderingon foot through thrace. but they are free-born men surely, aye, as free-born as you are,and they once measured out the gold coins of byzantium with a bushel". when the hostheard these words, all, both men and women, went to their leader theodoric the amal, andclaimed from him with tumultuous cries that he should come to an accommodation with theson of tnarius. the proposal must have been hateful to the amal. to throw away the laboriouslyearned favour of the emperor, to denude himself of the splendid dignity of master of the soldiery,to leave the comfortable home-like fabric of imperial civilisation and go out againinto the barbarian wilderness with this insolent
namesake who had just been denouncing himas a perjured boy: all this was gall and wormwood to the spirit of theodoric. but he knew theconditions under which he held his sovereignty--"king", as a recent french monarch expressed it, "bythe grace of god and the will of the people", and he did not attempt to strive against thedecision of his tumultuary parliament. he met his elderly competitor, each standingon the opposite bank of a disparting stream, and after speech had, they agreed that theywould wage no more war on one another but would make common cause against byzantium. the now confederated theodorics sent an embassyto zeno, bearing their common demands for territory, stipendia and rations for theirfollowers, and, in the case of theodoric the
amal, charged with bitter complaints of thedesertion which had exposed him to such dangers. the emperor replied with an accusation (whichappears to have been wholly unfounded) that theodoric himself had meditated treachery,and that this was the reason why the roman generals had feared to join their forces tohis. still the emperor was willing to receive him again into favour if he would relinquishhis alliance with the son of triarius, and in order to lure him back the ambassadorswere to offer him 1,000 pounds' weight of gold (â£40,000), 10,000 of silver (â£35,000),a yearly revenue of 10,000 aurei (â£6,000), and the daughter of olybrius, one of the noblest-borndamsels of byzantium, for his wife. but the amal king, having stooped so low as to makean alliance with the son of triarius, was
not going to stoop lower by breaking it. theambassadors returned to constantinople with their purpose unaccomplished, and zeno beganseriously to prepare for the apparently inevitable war with all the gothic få“derati in his land,commanded by both the theodorics. he summoned to the capital all the troops whom he couldmuster, and delivered to them a spirited oration, in which he exhorted them to be of good courage,declaring that he himself would go forth with them to war, and would share all their hardshipsand dangers. for nearly a hundred years, ever since the time of the great theodosius, noeastern emperor apparently had conducted a campaign in person; and the announcement thatthis inactivity was to be ended and that a roman imperator was again, like the imperatorsof old time, to march with the legions and
to withstand the shock of battle, roused thesoldiers to extraordinary enthusiasm. the very men who, a little while before, had beenbribing the officers to procure exemption from service, now offered larger sums of moneyin order to obtain an opportunity of distinguishing themselves under the eyes of the emperor.they pressed forward past the long wall which at about sixty miles from constantinople crossedthe narrow peninsula and defended the capital of the empire; they caught some of the forerunnersof the gothic host, the uhlans, if we may call them so, of theodoric: everything forebodedan encounter, more serious and perhaps more triumphant than any that had been seen sincethe days of theodosius. then, as in a moment, all was changed. zeno's old spirit of slothand cowardice returned. he would not undergo
the fatigue of the long marches through thrace,he would not look upon the battle-field, the very pictures of which he found so terrible;it was publicly announced that the emperor would not go forth to war. the soldiers, enraged,began to gather in angry groups, rebuking one another for their over-patience in submittingto be ruled by such a coward. "how? are we men, and have we swords in our hands, andshall we any longer bear with such disgraceful effeminacy, by which the might of this greatempire is sapped, so that every barbarian who chooses may carve out a slice from it?" these clamours were rapidly growing seditious,and in a few days an anti-emperor would probably have been proclaimed; but zeno, more afraidof his soldiers than even of the goths, adroitly
moved them into their widely-scattered winter-quarters,leaving the invaded provinces to take care of themselves for a little time, while hetried by his own natural weapons of bribery and intrigue to detach the other and oldertheodoric from the new confederacy. on this path he met with unmerited success.the son of triarius, who had lately been uttering such noble sentiments about gothic kinship,and the folly of gothic warriors playing into the hands of their hereditary enemies, thecrafty courtiers of constantinople, soon came to terms with the emperor, and on receivingthe command of two brigades of household troops,(scholse) his restoration to all the dignities whichhe had held under basiliscus, the military office which his rival had forfeited, andrations and allowances for 13,000 of his followers,
broke his alliance with theodoric the amal,and entered the service of the emperor of new rome. theodoric the amal, who was now in his owndespite (479) an outlaw from the roman state, burst in fierce wrath into macedonia, intothe region where he and his people had been first quartered five years before. again hemarched down the valley of the vardar, he took stobi, putting its garrison to the sword,and threatened the great city of thessalonica. the citizens, fearing that zeno would abandonthem to the barbarians, broke out into open sedition, threw down the statues of the emperor,took the keys of the city from the prefect and entrusted them to the safer keeping oftheir bishop. zeno sent ambassadors reproaching
the amal for his ungrateful requital of theunexampled favours and dignities which had been conferred upon him, and inviting himto return to his old fidelity. theodoric showed himself not unwilling to treat, sent ambassadorsto constantinople, and ordered his troops to refrain from murder and conflagration,and to take only the absolute necessaries of life from the provincials. he then quittedthe precincts of thessalonica and moved westwards to the city of heraclea (monastir), whichlies at the foot of the great mountain range that separates macedonia from epirus. whiletalking of peace he was already meditating a new and brilliant stroke of strategy, buthe was for some time hindered from accomplishing it by the illness of his sister, who, perhapsfatigued by the hardships of the march, had
fallen sick in the camp before heraclea. thistime of enforced delay was occupied by negotiations with the emperor. but the emperor had reallynothing to offer worth the ostrogoth's acceptance. a settlement on the pantalian plain, a bleakupland among the balkans, about forty miles south of sardica (sofia), and a payment oftwo hundred pounds' weight of gold (ã‚â£8,000) as subsistence-money for the people till theyshould have had time to till the land and reap their first harvest, this was all thatzeno offered to the chief, who already in imagination saw the rich cities of the adriaticlying defenceless at his feet. for during this time of inaction the amal had openedcommunications with a gothic landowner, named sigismund, who dwelt near dyrrhachium (durazzo),and was a man of influence in the province
of epirus; and sigismund, though nominallya loyal subject of the emperor, was doing his best to sow fear and discouragement inthe hearts of the citizens of dyrrhachium and to prepare the way for the advent of hiscountrymen. at length the gothic princess died, and herbrother, the amal, having vainly sought to put heraclea to ransom (the citizens had retiredto a strong fortress which commanded it), burned the deserted city, a deed more worthyof a barbarian than of one bred up in the roman commonwealth. then with all his nation-armyhe started off upon the great egnatian way, which, threading the rough passes of mountscardus, leads from macedonia to epirus, from the shores of the ã†gean to the shores ofthe adriatic. his light horsemen went first
to reconnoitre the path; then followed theodorichimself with the first division of his army. soas, his second in command, ordered the movementsof the middle host; last of all came the rear-guard, commanded by theodoric's brother, theudimund,and protecting the march of the women, the cattle, and the waggons. it was a strikingproof both of their leader's audacity and of his knowledge of the decay of martial spiritamong the various garrisons that lined the egnatian way, that he should have venturedwith such a train into such a perilous country, where at every turn were narrow defiles whicha few brave men might have held against an army. the amal and his host passed safely throughthe defiles of scardus and reached the fortress
of lychnidus overlooking a lake now knownas lake ochrida. here theodoric met with his first repulse. the fortress was immenselystrong by nature, was well stored with corn, and had springing fountains of its own, andthe garrison were therefore not to be frightened into surrender. accordingly, leaving the fortressuntaken, theodoric with his two first divisions pushed rapidly across the second and lowerrange, the candavian mountains, leaving theudimund with the waggons and the women to follow moreslowly. in this arrangement there was probably an error of judgment which theodoric had occasionbitterly to regret. for the moment, however, he was completely successful. descending intothe plain he took the towns of scamp㦠(elbassan) and dyrrhachium (durazzo), both of which,probably owing to the discouraging counsels
of sigismund, seem to have been abandonedby their inhabitants. great was the consternation at edessa (a townabout thirty miles west of thessalonica and the headquarters of the imperial troops) whenthe news of this unexpected march of theodoric across the mountains was brought into thecamp. not only the general-in-chief, sabinianus, was quartered there, but also a certain adamantius,an official of the highest rank, who had been charged by zeno with the conduct of the negotiationswith theodoric, and whose whole soul seems to have been set on the success of his mission.he contrived to communicate with theodoric, and advanced with sabinianus through the mountainsas far as lychnidus in order to conduct the discussion at closer quarters. propositionspassed backwards and forwards as to the terms
upon which a meeting could be arranged. theodoricsent a gothic priest; adamantius in reply offered to come in person to dyrrhachium ifsoas and another gothic noble were sent as hostages for his safe return. theodoric waswilling to send the hostages if sabinianus would swear that they should return in safety.this, however, for some reason or other, the general surlily and stubbornly refused todo, and adamantius saw the earnestly desired interview fading away into impossibility.at length, with courageous self-devotion, he succeeded in finding a by-path across themountains, which brought him to a fort, situated on a hill and strengthened by a deep ditch,in sight of dyrrhachium. from thence he sent messengers to theodoric earnestly solicitinga conference; and the amal, leaving his army
in the plain, rode with a few horsemen tothe banks of the stream which separated him from adamantius' stronghold. adamantius, too,to guard against a surprise, placed his little band of soldiers in a circle round the hill,and then descended to the stream, and with none to listen to their speech, commencedthe long-desired colloquy. how adamantius may have opened his case we are not informed,but the ostrogoth's reply is worth quoting word for word: "it was my choice to live altogetherout of thrace, far away towards scythia, where i should disturb no one by my presence, andyet should be ready to go forth thence to do the emperor's bidding. but you having calledme forth, as if for war against the son of tnarius, first of all promised that the generalof thrace should immediately join me with
his forces (he never appeared); and then thatclaudius, the steward of the goth-money, should meet me with the pay of the mercenaries (himi never saw); and thirdly, you gave me guides for my journey, but what sort of guides? menwho, leaving untrodden all the easier roads into the enemy's country, led me by a steeppath and along the sharp edges of cliffs, where, had the enemy attacked us, travellingas we were bound to do with horsemen and waggons and all the lumber of our camp, it had beena marvel if i and all my folk had not been utterly destroyed. hence i was forced to makesuch terms as i could with the foes, and in fact i owe them many thanks that, when youhad betrayed and they might have consumed me, they nevertheless spared my life".
adamantius went over the old story about thegreat benefits which the emperor had bestowed on theodoric, the patriciate, the mastership,the rich presents, and all the other evidences of his fatherly regard. he attempted to answerthe charges brought by theodoric, but in this even the greek historian who records the dialoguethinks that he failed. with more show of reason he complained of the march across the mountainsand the dash into epirus, while negotiations were proceeding with constantinople. he recommendedhim to make peace with the empire while it was in his power, and assuring him that hewould never be allowed to lord it over the great cities of epirus nor to banish theircitizens from thence to make room for his people, again pressed him to accept the emperor'soffer of "dardania" (the pantalian plain),
"where there was abundance of land, besidethat which was already inhabited, a fair and fertile territory lacking cultivators, whichhis people could till, so providing themselves in abundance with all the necessaries of life". theodoric refused with an oath to take histoil-worn people who had served him so faithfully, at that time of year (it was now perhaps autumn)into dardania. no! they must all remain in epirus for the winter; then if they couldagree upon the rest of the terms he might be willing in spring to follow a guide sentby the emperor to lead them to their new abode. but more than this, he was ready to deposithis baggage and all his unwarlike folk in any city which the emperor might appoint,to give his mother and his sister as hostages
for his entire fidelity, and then to advanceat once with ten thousand of his bravest warriors into thrace, as the emperor's ally. with thesemen and the imperial armies now stationed in the illyrian provinces, he would undertaketo sweep thrace clear of all the goths who followed the son of triarius. only he stipulatedthat in that case he should be clothed with his old dignity of master of the soldiery,which had been taken from him and bestowed on his rival, and that he should be receivedinto the commonwealth and allowed to live--as he evidently yearned to live--as a roman citizen. adamantius replied that he was not empoweredto treat on such terms while theodoric remained in epirus, but he would refer his proposalto the emperor, and with this understanding
they parted one from the other. meanwhile, important, and for the goths disastrous,events had been taking place in the candavian mountains. over these the rear-guard of theodoric'sarmy, with the waggons and the baggage, had been slowly making its way, in a securitywhich was no doubt chiefly caused by the facility of the previous marches, but to which theknowledge of the negotiations going forward between king and emperor may partly have contributed.in any case, security was certainly insecure with such a fort as lychnidus untaken in theirrear. the garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who hadflocked thither at the general's signal, and with these sabinianus prepared a formidableambuscade. he sent a considerable number of
infantry round by unfrequented paths overthe mountains, and ordered them to take up a commanding but concealed position, and torush forth from thence at a given signal. he himself started with his cavalry from lychnidusat nightfall, and rode rapidly along the egnatian way. at dawn the pursuing horsemen attackedthe goths, who were just descending the last mountain slopes into the plain. theudimund,with his mother, was riding near the head of the long line of march. too anxious perhapsfor her safety, and fearing to meet the reproachful looks of theodoric if aught of harm happenedto her, he hurried her across the last bridge, spanning a deep defile, which intervened betweenthe mountains and the plain, and then broke down the bridge behind him to prevent pursuit.pursuit was indeed rendered impossible, and
the mother of theodoric was saved, but atwhat a cost! the goths turned back to fight, with the courage of despair, the pursuingcavalry. at that moment the infantry in ambush, having received the signal, began to attackthem from the rocks above. the position was a terrible one, and many brave men fell inthe hopeless battle. quarter, however, was given by the imperial soldiers, for we aretold that more than five thousand of the goths were taken prisoners. the booty was large;and all the waggons of the barbarians, two thousand in number, were of course captured,but the soldiers, misliking the toil of dragging them back over all those jagged passes tolychnidus, burned them there as they stood upon the candavian mountains.
i have copied with some minuteness the accountgiven us by the greek historian of this mountain march of theodoric, because it brings beforeus with more than usual vividness the conditions under which the campaigns of the barbarianswere conducted. it will have been noticed that the gothic army is not only an army buta nation, and that the campaign is also a migration. the mother and the sister of theodoricare accompanying him. there is evidently a long train of non-combatants, old men, women,and children, following the army in those two thousand gothic waggons. the characterattributed by horace to the campestres scythã¦, quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos
still survives. "the waggon holds the scythian's wanderinghome". the goth, a terrible enemy to those outsidethe pale of his kinship, is a home-lover at heart, and even in war will not separate himselffrom his wife and children. this makes his impact slow, his campaigns unscientific. itprepares for him frequent defeats, such as that of the candavian mountains, which a celibatearmy would have avoided. but it makes his conquests, when he does conquer, more enduring,while it explains those perpetual demands for land, for a settlement within the empire,almost on any terms, with which, as was before shown, the barbarian inroads so often close.we need not follow the tedious story of the
negotiations with adamantius, which were interruptedby this sudden success of the imperial arms. in fact at this point our best authority,who has been unusually full and graphic for the events of 478 and 479, suddenly failsus, and we have scarcely anything but dry and scanty annalistic notices for the nextnine years of the life of theodoric. he seems not to have maintained his footing in epirus,but to have returned to the neighbourhood of the danube, where he fought and conqueredthe king of the bulgarians, a fresh horde of barbarians who at this time made theirfirst appearance in "the balkan peninsula" whether the much desired reconciliation withthe empire took place we know not. it seems probable that this may have been the case,as in the year 481 we find his rival, the
other theodoric, in opposition, and planningan invasion of greece. but the career of the son of triarius was about to come to an untimelyclose. marching westwards, he had reached a station on the egnatian way, near the frontiersof thrace and macedonia, called "the stables of diomed", and there pitched his camp. onemorning he would fain mount his horse for a gallop across the plain, but before he wassecurely seated in the saddle the horse reared. the rider, afraid to grasp the bridle firmlylest he should pull the creature over upon him, clung tightly to his seat, but couldnot guide the horse, which, in its dancing and prancing, came sidling past the door ofthe tent. there was hanging, in barbarian fashion, a spear fastened by a thong. thehorse shied up against the spear, whose point
gored his master's side. he was not killedon the spot, but died soon after of the wound. after some domestic dissensions and bloodshed,the leadership of his band passed to his son recitach, apparently a hot-tempered and tyrannicalyouth. three years after his father's death (484),recitach, now an enemy of the empire, was put to death by theodoric the amal, actingunder the orders of zeno. the band of triarian goths, thirty thousand fighting men in number,was joined to the army of theodoric, an important addition to his power, but also to his cares,to the ever-present difficulty of finding food for his followers. (481-487) backwards and forwards between peaceand war with the empire, theodoric wavered
during the six years which followed his rival'sdeath. the settlement of his people at this time seems to have been on the southern shoreof the danube, in part of the countries now known as servia and wallachia, with novã¦(sistova) for his headquarters. one year (482) he is making a raid into macedonia and thessalyand plundering larissa. the next (483) he is again clothed with his old dignity of masterof the soldiery and keeps his goths rigidly within their allotted limits. the next (484)he is actually raised to the consulate, an office which, though devoid of power, is stillso radiant with the glory of the illustrious men who have held it for near a thousand years,from the days of brutus and collatinus, that emperors covet the possession of it and themightiest barbarian chiefs in their service
long for no higher reward. two years after this (486) he is again inrebellion, ravaging thrace; the next year (487) he has broken through the long wallsand penetrates within fourteen miles of constantinople. in all this wearisome period of theodoric'slife his action seems to be merely destructive; there is nothing constructive, no fruitfulor fertilising thought to be found in it. had this been a fair sample of his life, therecould be no reason why he should not sink into the oblivion which covers so many forgottenfreebooters. but in 488 a change came over the spirit of his dream. a plan was agreedupon between him and the emperor (by which of them it was first suggested we cannot nowsay) for the employment of all this wasted
and destructive force in another field, whereits energies might accomplish some result beneficent and enduring. that new field was italy, and in order tounderstand the conditions of the problem which there awaited theodoric, we must briefly recountthe chief events which had happened in that peninsula since attila departed from untakenrome in compliance with the petition of pope leo. chapter vi.italy under odovacar. in former chapters i have very briefly sketchedthe fortunes of the italian peninsula during two great barbarian invasions--that of alaric(407-410) and that of attila (452). the monarch
who ruled the western empire at the date ofthe last invasion was valentinian iii., grandson of the great theodosius. he dwelt sometimesat rome, sometimes at ravenna, which latter city, protected by the waves of the adriaticand by the innumerable canals and pools through which the waters of two rivers flowed lazilyto the sea, was all but impregnable by the barbarians. a selfish and indolent voluptuary,valentinian iii. made no valuable contribution to the defence of the menaced empire, somestones of which were being shaken down every year by the tremendous blows of the teutonicinvaders. any wisdom that might be shown in the councils of the state was due to his mother,galla placidia, who, till her death in 451, was the real ruler of the empire. any strengthand valour that was displayed in its defence
was due to the great minister and general,aã«tius, a man who had himself, probably, many drops of barbarian blood in his veins,though he has been not unfitly styled "the last of the romans". it was aã«tius who, aswe have seen, in concert with the visigothic king, fought the fight of civilisation againsthunnish barbarism on the catalaunian battle-plain. it was to "aã«tius, thrice consul", that "thegroans of the britons" were addressed when "the barbarians drove them to the sea, andthe sea drove them back on the barbarians". when attila was dead, the weak and worthlessemperor seems to have thought that he might safely dispense with the services of thistoo powerful subject. inviting aã«tius to his palace, he debated with him a scheme forthe marriage of their children (the son of
the general was to wed the daughter of theemperor), and when the debate grew warm, with calculated passion he snatched a sword fromone of his guardsmen, and with it pierced the body of aã«tius. the bloody work was finishedby the courtiers standing by, and the most eminent of the friends and counsellors ofthe deceased statesman were murdered at the same time. the foul assassination of this great defenderof the roman state was requited next year by two barbarians of his train, men who nodoubt cherished for aã«tius the same feelings of personal loyalty which bound the membersof a teutonic "comitatus" to their chief, and who deemed life a dishonour while theirleader's blood remained unavenged. on a day
in march, while valentinian was watching intentlythe games in the campus martius of rome, these two barbarians rushed upon him and stabbedhim, slaying at the same time the eunuch, who had been his chief confederate in themurder of aã«tius. with valentinian iii. the line of theodosius,which had swayed the roman sceptre for eighty-six years, came to an end. none of the men whoafter him bore the great title of augustus in rome (i am speaking, of course, of thefifth century only) succeeded in founding a dynasty. not only was no one of them followedby a son: scarcely one of them was suffered to end his own reign in peace. of the nineemperors who wore the purple in italy after the death of valentinian, only two ended theirreigns in the course of nature, four were
deposed, and three met their death by violence.only one reigned for more than five years; several could only measure the duration oftheir royalty by months. even the short period (455-476) which these nine reigns occupy isnot entirely filled by them, for there were frequent interregna, one lasting for a yearand eight months. and the men were as feeble as their kingly life was short and precarious.with the single exception of majorian, (457-461), a brave and strong man, and one who, if fairplay had been given him, would have assuredly done something to stay the ruin of the empire,all of these nine men (with whose names there is no need to burden the reader's memory)are fitly named by a german historian "the shadow emperors".
during sixteen years of this time (456-472),supreme power in the empire was virtually wielded by a nobleman of barbarian origin,but naturalised in the roman state, the proud and stern "patrician" ricimer. this man, descendedfrom the chiefs of the suevi, grandson of a visigothic king, and brother-in-law of aking of the burgundians, was doubtless able to bring much barbaric influence to supportthe cause which, from whatever motives, he had espoused,--the cause of the defence ofthat which was left to rome of her empire in the west of europe. many teutonic tribes had by this time settledthemselves in the imperial lands. spain was quite lost to the empire: some fragments ofgaul were still bound to it by a most precarious
tie; but the loss which threatened the lifeof the state most nearly was the loss of africa. for this province, the capital of which wasthe restored and romanised city of carthage, had been for generations the chief exporterof corn to feed the pauperised population of rome, and here now dwelt and ruled, andfrom hence (428-432) sallied forth to his piratical raids against italy, the deadliestenemy of the roman name, the king of the vandals, gaiseric. the vandal conquest of africa was,at the time which we have now reached, a somewhat old story, nearly a generation having elapsedsince it occurred, but the vandal sack of rome, which came to pass immediately afterthe death of valentinian iii., and which marked the beginning of the period of the "shadowemperors" was still near and terrible to the
memories of men. no roman but remembered inbitterness of soul how in june, 455, the long ships of the vandals appeared at the mouthof the tiber, how gaiseric and his men landed, marched to the eternal city, and entered itunopposed, how they remained there for a fortnight, not perhaps slaying or ravishing, but withcalm insolence plundering the city of all that they cared to carry away, stripping offwhat they supposed to be the golden roof of the capitol, removing the statues from theirpedestals, transporting everything that seemed beautiful or costly, and stowing away alltheir spoils in the holds of those insatiable vessels of theirs which lay at anchor at ostia. the remembrance of this humiliating captureand the fear that it might at any moment be
repeated, probably with circumstances of greateratrocity, were the dominant emotions in the hearts of the roman senate and people duringthe twenty-one years which we are now rapidly surveying. it was doubtless these feelingswhich induced them to submit more patiently than they would otherwise have done to thescarcely veiled autocracy of an imperfectly romanised teuton such as ricimer. he was abarbarian, it was true; probably he could not even speak latin grammatically; but hewas mighty with the barbarian kings, mighty with the få“derati the rough soldiers gatheredfrom every german tribe on the other side of the alps, who now formed the bulk of theimperial army; let him be as arrogant as he would to the senate, let him set up and pulldown one "shadow emperor" after another, if
only he would keep the streets of rome frombeing again profaned by the tread of the terrible vandal. (456-468) to a certain extent the confidencereposed in ricimer was not misplaced. he inflicted a severe defeat on the vandals in a navalengagement near the island of corsica; he raised to the throne the young and valiantmajorian, who repelled a vandal invasion of campania; he planned, in conjunction withthe eastern emperor, a great expedition against carthage, which failed through no fault ofhis, but by the bad generalship of basiliscus, whose brother-in-law, leo, had appointed himto the command. but the rule of a barbarian like ricimer exercised on the sacred soilof italy, and the brutal arrogance with which
he dashed down one of his puppet-emperorsafter another when they had served his purpose, must have done much to break the spirit ofthe roman nobles and the roman commonalty, and to prepare the way for the teutonic revolutionwhich occurred soon after his death. above all, we have reason to think that, duringthe whole time of ricimer's ascendancy, the barbarian få“derati were becoming more absolutelydominant in the roman army, and with waxing numbers were growing more insolent in theirdemeanour, and more intolerable in their demands. the ranks of the få“derati were at this timerecruited, not from one of the great historic nationalities--visigoth, ostrogoth, frank,or burgundian,--but chiefly from a number of petty tribes, known as the rugii, scyri,heruli, and turcilingi, who have failed to
make any enduring mark in history. these tribes,which upon the break-up of attila's empire had established themselves on the shore ofthe middle danube, north and west of the lands occupied by the ostrogoths, were continuallysending their young warriors over the passes of noricum (salzburg, styria, and carinthia)to seek their fortune in italy. one of these recruits, on his southward journey, steppedinto the cave of a holy hermit named severinus, and stooping his lofty stature in the lowlycell, asked the saint's blessing. when the blessing was given, the youth said: "farewell"."not farewell, but fare forward", answered severinus. "onward into italy: skin-clothednow, but destined before long to enrich many men with costly gifts". the name of this youngrecruit was odovacar.
odovacar probably entered italy about 465.he attached himself to the party of ricimer, and before long became a conspicuous captainof få“derati after the death of ricimer (18th august, 472), there was a series of rapidrevolutions in the roman state. olybrius, the then reigning nonentity, died in octoberof the same year. (june, 474) after five months' interregnum,a yet more shadowy shadow, glycerius, succeeded him, and after fifteen months of rule wasthrust from the throne by julius nepos, who had married the niece of verina, the mischief-makingaugusta of the east, and who was, therefore, supported by all the moral influence of constantinople. nepos, after fourteen months of empire, inwhich he distinguished himself only by the
loss of some (oct.,475) gaulish provincesto the visigoths, was in his turn dethroned by the master of the soldiery, orestes, whohad once held a subordinate situation in the court of attila. nepos fled to dalmatia, whichwas probably his native land, and lived there for four years after his dethronement, stillkeeping up some at least of the state which belonged to a roman emperor. we know very little of the pretexts for theserapid revolutions, or the circumstances attending them, but there cannot be much doubt thatthe army was the chief agent in what, to borrow a phrase from modern spanish politics, werea series of pronunciamentos. for some reason which is dim to us, orestes, though a full-bloodedroman citizen, did not set the diadem on his
own head, but placed it on that of his son,a handsome boy of some fourteen or fifteen years, named romulus, and nicknamed "the littleaugustus". for himself, he took the dignity of "patrician", which had been so long wornby ricimer, and was associated in men's minds with the practical mastery of the empire.but a ruler who has been raised to the throne by military sedition soon finds that the authorsof his elevation are the most exacting of masters. the få“derati, who knew themselvesnow absolute arbiters of the destiny of the empire, and who had the same craving for asettlement within its borders which we have met with more than once among the followersof theodoric, presented themselves before the patrician orestes, and demanded that one-thirdof the lands of italy should be assigned to
them as a perpetual inheritance. this wasmore than orestes dared to grant, and, on his refusal, odovacar said to the mercenaries:"make me king and i will obtain for you your desire". (23d aug., 476) the offer was accepted; odovacarwas lifted high on a shield by the arms of stalwart barbarians, and saluted as king bytheir unanimous acclamations. when the få“derati were gathered out of the"roman" army, there seems to have been nothing left that was capable of making any real defenceof the empire. the campaign, if such it may be called, between odovacar and orestes wasof the shortest and most perfunctory kind. ticinum (pavia), in which orestes had takenrefuge, was taken, sacked, and partly burnt
by the barbarians. the master of the soldieryhimself fled to placentia, but was there taken prisoner and beheaded, only five days afterthe elevation of odovacar. a week later his brother paulus, who had not men enough tohold even the strong city of ravenna, was taken prisoner, and slain in the great pine-forestoutside that city. at ravenna the young puppet-emperor, romulus, was also taken prisoner. the barbarianshowed himself more merciful, perhaps also more contemptuous, towards his boy-rival thanwas the custom of the emperors of rome and constantinople towards the sons of their competitors.odovacar, who pitied the tender years of augustulus, and looked with admiration on his beautifulcountenance, spared his life and assigned to him for a residence the palace and gardensof lucullus, the conqueror of mithridates,
who five and a half centuries before had preparedfor himself this beautiful home (the lucullanum) in the very heart of the lovely bay of naples.the building and the fortifying of a great commercial city have utterly altered the wholeaspect of the bay, but in the long egg-shaped peninsula, on which stands to-day the casteldell' ovo, we can still see the outlines of the famous lucullanum, in which the last romanemperor of rome ended his inglorious days. his conqueror generously allowed him a pensionof â£3,600 per annum, but for how long this pension continued to be a charge on the revenuesof the new kingdom we are unable to say. there is one doubtful indication of his having survivedhis abdication by about thirty years, but clear historical notices of his subsequentlife and of the date of his death are denied
us; a striking proof of the absolute nullityof his character. this then was the event which stands out inthe history of europe as the "fall of the western empire" the reader will perceive thatit was no great and terrible invasion of a conquering host like the fall of the easternempire in 1453; no sudden overthrow of a national polity like the norman conquest of 1066; noteven a bloody overturning of the existing order by demagogic force like the french revolutionof 1792. it was but the continuance of a process which had been going forward more or lessmanifestly for nearly a century,--the recognition of the fact that the få“derati, the so-calledbarbarian mercenaries of rome, were really her masters. if we had to seek a parallelfor the event of 476, we should find it rather
in the deposition of the last mogul emperorat delhi, and the public assumption by the british queen of the "raj" over the greaterpart of india, than in any of the other events to which we have alluded. reflecting on this fact, and seeing that theroman empire still lived on in the east for nearly a thousand years, that the easterncã¦sar never for many generations reliquished his claim to be considered the legitimateruler of the old rome, as well as of the new, and sometimes asserted that claim in a veryreal and effective manner, and considering too that charles the great, when he (in modernphrase) "restored the western empire" in 800, never professed to be the successor of romulusaugustulus, but of constantine vi., the then
recently deposed emperor of the east; thelatest school of historical investigators, with scarcely an exception, minimise the importanceof the event of 476, and some even object to the expression "fall of the western empire"as fitly describing it. the protest is a sound one and was greatly needed. perhaps now thedanger is in the other direction, and there is a risk of our making too little of an eventin which after all the sceptre did manifestly depart from rome. during the whole intervalbetween odovacar's accession and belisarius' occupation of rome (476-536), no roman, howeverproud or patriotic, could blind himself to the fact that a man of barbarian blood wasthe real, and in a certain sense the supreme, ruler of his country. ricimer might be lookedupon as an eminent servant of the emperor
who had the misfortune to be of barbarianbirth. odovacar and theodoric were, without all contradiction, kings; if not "kings ofitaly", at any rate "kings in italy", sometimes actually making war on the cã¦sar of byzantium,and not caring, when they did so, to set up the phantom of a rival emperor in order tolegitimise their opposition. but in a matter so greatly debated as this it will be safernot to use our own or any modern words, this is how count marcellinus, an official of theeastern empire, writing his annals about fifty-eight years after the deposition of romulus, describesthe event: "odovacar killed orestes and condemned his son augustulus to the punishment of exilein the lucullanum, a castle of campania. the hesperian (western) empire of the roman people,which octavianus augustus first of the augusti
began to hold in the 709th year of the buildingof the city (b.c. 44), perished with this augustulus in the 522d year of his predecessors(a.d. 476), the kings of the goths thenceforward holding both rome and italy". of the details of odovacar's rule in italywe know very little. of course the få“derati had their will, at any rate in some measure,with reference to the assignment of land in italy, but no historian has told us anythingas to the social disorganisation which such a redistribution of property must have produced.there are some indications that it was not thoroughly carried into effect, at any ratein the south of italy, and that the settlements of the få“derati were chiefly in the valleyof the po, and in the districts since known
as the romagna. the old imperial machinery of government wastaken over by the new ruler, and in all outward appearance things probably went on under kingodovacar much as they had done under count ricimer. no great act of cruelty or oppressionstains the memory of odovacar. he lost provence to the visigoths, but, on the other hand,he by judicious diplomacy recovered sicily from the vandals. altogether it is probablethat italy was, at any rate, not more miserable under the sway of this barbarian king thanshe had been at any time since alaric's invasion, in 408, proclaimed her helplessness to theworld. one piece of solemn comedy is worth relating,namely, the embassies despatched to constantinople
by the rival claimants to the dominion ofitaly. it was probably towards the end of 477, or early in 478, that zeno, then recentlyreturned from exile after the usurpation of basiliscus, received two embassies from twodeposed emperors of the west. first of all came the ambassadors of augustulus, or ratherof the roman senate, sent nominally by the orders of augustulus, really by those of odovacar.these men, great roman nobles, represented "that they did not need an emperor of theirown. one absolute ruler was sufficient to guard both east and west; but they had, moreover,chosen odovacar, who was well able to protect their interests, being a man wise in counseland brave in war. they therefore prayed the emperor to bestow on him the dignity of patrician,and to entrust to him the administration of
the affairs of italy". at the same time (apparently)they brought the ornaments of the imperial dignity, the diadem, the purple robe, thejewelled buskins, which had been worn by all the "shadow emperors" who flitted across thestage, and requested that they might be laid up in the imperial palace at constantinople. simultaneously there came ambassadors fromnepos, the imperial refugee, the nephew by marriage of verina. from his dalmatian exilehe congratulated his kinsman zeno on his recent restoration to the throne, and begged himto lend men and money to bring about the like happy result for him by replacing him on thewestern throne. to these embassies zeno returned ambiguousanswers, which seemed to leave the question
as to the legitimacy of odovacar's rule anopen one. the senate were sharply rebuked for having acquiesced in the dethronementof nepos, and a previous emperor who had been sent to them from the east. 50 odovacar wasrecommended to seek the coveted dignity from nepos, and to co-operate for his return. atthe same time, the moderation of odovacar's rule, and his desire to conform himself tothe maxims of roman civilisation, received the emperor's praise. the nature of the replyto nepos is not recorded, but it was no doubt made plain to him that sympathy and good wisheswere all that he would receive from his eastern colleague. the letters addressed to odovacarbore the superscription "to the patrician odovacar", and that was all that the barbarianreally cared for. with such a title as this,
every act, even the most high-handed, on thepart of the barbarian king was rendered legitimate. nepos and augustulus were equally excludedas useless encumbrances to the state, and the kings de jure and de facto became practicallyone man, and that man odovacar. chapter vii.the conquest of italy. the friendly relations between odovacar andthe eastern emperor which had been established by the embassy last described were graduallyaltered into estrangement. in the year 480, nepos, the dethroned emperor of rome, wasstabbed by two treacherous courtiers in his palace near salona. odovacar led an army intodalmatia, and avenged the murder, but also apparently annexed the province of dalmatiato his dominion, thus coming into nearer neighbourhood
with constantinople (487-488) this may havebeen one cause of alienation, but a more powerful one was the negotiation which was commencedin the year 484 between odovacar and illus, the last of the many insurgent generals whodisturbed the reign of zeno. at first odovacar held himself aloof from the proposed confederacy,but afterwards (486) he was disposed, or zeno believed that he was disposed, to accept thealliance of the insurgent general. in order to find him sufficient occupation nearer home,the emperor fanned into a flame the smouldering embers of discord between odovacar and feletheus,king of the rugians, the most powerful ruler of those danubian lands from which the italianking himself had migrated into italy. the rugian war was short, and odovacar's successwas decisive. in 487 he vanquished the rugian
army and carried feletheus and his wife prisonersto ravenna. in 488 an attempt to raise again the standard of the rugian monarchy, whichwas made by frederic, the son of feletheus, was crushed, and frederic, an exile and afugitive, betook himself to the camp of theodoric, who was then dwelling at nov㦠(sistova?),on the danube. when the attempt to weaken odovacar by meansof his fellow-barbarians in "rugiland" failed, zeno feigned outward acquiescence, offeringcongratulations on the victory and receiving presents out of the rugian spoils, but inhis heart he felt that there must now be war to the death between him and this too powerfulruler of italy. the news came to him at a time when theodoric was in one of his mostturbulent and destructive moods, when he had
penetrated within fourteen miles of constantinopleand had fired the towns and villages of thrace, perhaps even within sight of the capital.it was a natural thought and not altogether an unstatesmanlike expedient to play off onedisturber of his peace against the other, to commission theodoric to dethrone the "tyrant"odovacar, and thus at least earn repose for the provincials of thrace, perhaps securean ally at ravenna. theodoric, we may be sure, with those instincts of civilisation and lovefor the empire which had been in his heart from boyhood, though often repressed and disobeyed,needed little exhortation to an enterprise which he may himself have suggested to theemperor. thus then it came to pass that a formal interviewwas arranged between emperor and king (perhaps
at constantinople, though it seems doubtfulwhether theodoric could have safely trusted himself within its walls), and at this interviewthe terms of the joint enterprise were arranged, an enterprise to which theodoric was to contributeall the effective strength and zeno the glamour of imperial legitimacy. when the high contracting parties met, theodoriclamented the hapless condition of italy and rome: italy once subject to the predecessorsof zeno; rome, once the mistress of the world, now harassed and distressed by the usurpedauthority of a king of rugians and turcilingians. if the emperor would send theodoric thitherwith his people, he would be at once relieved from the heavy charges of their stipendiawhich he was now bound to furnish, while theodoric
would hold the land as of the free gift ofthe emperor, and would reign there as king, only till zeno himself should arrive to claimthe supremacy. in the autumn of the year 488, theodoric withall his host set forth from sistova on the danube on his march to italy. his road wasthe same taken by alaric and by most of the barbarian invaders; along the danube as faras belgrade, then between the rivers drave and save or along the banks of one of themtill he reached the julian alps (not far from the modern city of laibach), then down uponaquileia and the venetian plain. as in the macedonian campaign, so now, he was accompaniedby all the members of his nation, old men and children, mothers and maidens, and doubtlessby a long train of waggons. we have no accurate
information whatever as to the number of hisarmy, but various indications, both in earlier and later history, seem to justify us in assumingthat the soldiers must have numbered fully 40,000; and if this was the case, the wholenation cannot have been less than 200,000. the difficulty of finding food for so greata multitude in the often desolated plains of pannonia and noricum must have been enormous,and was no doubt the reason of the slowness of theodoric's progress. very probably hedivided his army into several portions, moving on parallel lines; foragers would scour thecountry far and wide, stores of provisions would be accumulated in the great gothic waggons,which would be laboriously driven over the rough mountain passes. then all the divisionsof the army which had scattered in search
of food would have to concentrate again whenthey came into the neighbourhood of an enemy, whether odovacar or one of the barbarian kingswho sought to bar their progress. all these operations consumed much time, and hence itwas that though the goths started on their pilgrimage in 488 (probably in the autumnof that year) they did not descend into the plains of italy even at its extreme north-easterncorner, till july, 489. there was one fact which probably facilitatedthe progress of theodoric, and prevented his expedition with such a multitude from beingcondemned as absolute foolhardiness. his road lay, for the most part, through regions withwhich he was already well acquainted, through a land which might almost be called his nativeland, and both the resources and the difficulties
of which were well known to him. the firstconsiderable city that he came to, singidunum (the modern belgrade), was the scene of hisown first boyish battle. the gepidã¦, who were his chief antagonists on the road, hadswarmed over into that very province of pannonia where his father's palace once stood; andthough they showed themselves bitter foes, they were doubtless surrounded by foes oftheir own who would be friends to the ostrogoths. probably, too, frederic, the rugian refugee,brought with him many followers who knew the road and could count on the assistance ofsome barbarian allies, eager to overturn the throne of odovacar. thus it will be seen thatthough the perils of the ostrogothic march were tremendous, the danger which in thosemapless days was so often fatal to an invading
army--ignorance of the country--was not amongthem. we are vaguely told of countless battles foughtby the ostrogoths with sclavonic and other tribes that lay across their line of march,but the only battle of which we have any details (and those only such as we can extract fromthe cloudy rhetoric of a popular preacher) is one which was fought with the gepidse,soon after the goths had emerged from the territory of the friendly empire, near thegreat mere or river which went by the name of hiulca palus, in what is now the crown-landof sclavonia. when the great and over-wearied multitude approached the outskirts of thegepid territory, their leader sent an embassy to traustila, king of the gepidã¦, entreatingthat his host might have an unmolested passage,
and offering to pay for the provisions whichthey would require. to this embassy traustila returned a harsh and insulting answer: "hewould yield no passage through his dominions to the ostrogoths; if they would go by thatroad they must first fight with the unconquered gepidã¦" traustila then took up a strong positionnear the hiulca palus, whose broad waters, girdled by fen and treacherous morass, madethe onward march of the invaders a task of almost desperate danger. but the ostrogothscould not now retreat; famine and pestilence lay behind them on their road; they must goforward, and with a reluctant heart theodoric gave the signal for the battle. it seemed at first as if that battle wouldbe lost, and as if the name and fame of the
ostrogothic people would be swallowed up inthe morasses of the reedy hiulca. already the van of the army, floundering in the softmud, and with only their wicker shields to oppose to the deadly shower of the gepid arrows,were like to fall back in confusion. then theodoric, having called for a cup of wine,and drunk to the fortunes of his people, in a few spirited words called to his soldiersto follow his standard--the standard of a king who would carve out the way to victory.perchance he may have discerned some part of the plain where the road went over solidground, and if that were beset by foes, at any rate the gepid was less terrible thanthe morass. so it was that he charged triumphantly through the hostile ranks, and, being followedby his eager warriors, achieved a signal victory.
the gepid㦠were soon wandering over the plain,a broken and dispirited force. multitudes of them were slain before the descent of nightsaved the remaining fugitives, and so large a number of the gepid store-waggons fell intothe hands of the ostrogoths that throughout the host one voice of rejoicing arose thattraustila had been willing to fight. so had a little gothic blood bought food more thanthey could ever have afforded money to purchase. thus, through foes and famine, hardships ofthe winter and hardships of the summer, the nation-army held on its way, and at length(as has been already said) in the month of august (489) the last of the waggons descendedfrom the highlands, which are an outpost of the julian alps, and the ostrogoths were encampedon the plains of italy. odovacar, who apparently
had allowed them to accomplish the passageof the alps unmolested, stood ready to meet them on the banks of the isonzo, the riverwhich flows near the ruins of the great city of aquileia. he had a large army, the kernelof which would doubtless be those mercenaries who had raised him on the shield thirteenyears before, and among whom he had divided one-third part of the soil of italy. but manyother barbarians had flocked to his standard, so that he had, as it were, a little courtof kings, chieftains serving under him as supreme leader. he himself, however, was nowin the fifty-sixth year of his age, and his genius for war, if he ever had any, seemsto have failed him. he fought (as far as we can discern his conduct from the fragmentarynotices of the annalists and panegyrists)
with a sort of sullen savageness, like a wildbeast at bay, but without skill either of strategy or tactics. the invaders, encumberedwith the waggons and the non-combatants, had greatly the disadvantage of position. odovacar'scamp had been long prepared, was carefully fortified, and protected by the deep and rapidisonzo. but theodoric's soldiers succeeded in crossing the river, stormed the camp, defendedas it was by a strong earthen rampart, and sent its defenders flying in wild rout overthe plains of venetia. odovacar fell back on the line of the adige, and the beautifulnorth-eastern corner of italy, the region which includes among its cities udine, venice,vicenza, padua, now accepted without dispute the rule of theodoric, and perhaps welcomedhim as a deliverer from the stern sway of
odovacar. from this time forward it is allowableto conjecture that the most pressing of theodoric's anxieties, that which arose from the difficultyof feeding and housing the women and children of his people, if not wholly removed was greatlylightened. odovacar took up a strong position near verona, separated from that city by theriver adige. theodoric, though not well provided with warlike appliances, rightly judged thatit was of supreme importance to his cause to follow up with rapidity the blow struckon the banks of the isonzo, and accordingly, towards the end of september, he, with hisarmy, stood before the fossatum or entrenched camp at verona. in order to force his soldiersto fight bravely, odovacar had, in defiance of the ordinary rules of war, placed his campwhere retreat was almost hopelessly barred
by the swift stream of the adige, and he addressedhis army with stout words full of simulated confidence in victory. on the morning of the30th of september, when the two armies were about to join in what must evidently be amost bloody encounter, the mother and sister of theodoric, erelieva and amalfrida, soughthis presence and asked him with some anxiety what were the chances of the battle. withwords, reminding us of the homeric saying that "the best omen is to fight bravely forone's country", theodoric reassured their doubting hearts. on that day, he told hismother, it was for him to show that she had given birth to a hero on the day when theostrogoths did battle with the huns. dressed in his most splendid robes, those robes whichtheir hands had adorned with bright embroidery,
he would be conspicuous both to friend andfoe, and would give a noble spoil to his conqueror if any man could succeed in slaying him. withthese words he leapt on his horse, rushed to the van, cheered on his wavering troops,and began a series of charges, which at length, but not till thousands of his own men as wellas of the enemy were slain, carried the fossatum of odovacar. the battle once gained, of course the dispositionswhich odovacar had made to ensure the resistance of his soldiers, necessitated their ruin,and the swirling waters of the adige probably destroyed as many as the ostrogothic sword.odovacar himself, again a fugitive, sped across the plain south-eastward to ravenna, compelledlike so many roman emperors before him to
shelter himself from the invader behind itsuntraversable network of rivers and canals. it would seem from the scanty notices whichremain to us that in this battle of verona, the bloodiest and most hardly fought of allthe battles of the war, the original army of få“derati, the men who had crowned odovacarking, and divided the third part of italy between them, was, if not annihilated, utterlybroken and dispirited, and theodoric, who now marched westward with his people, andwas welcomed with blessing and acclamations by the bishop and citizens of milan, receivedalso the transferred allegiance of the larger part of the army of his rival. it seemed as if a campaign of a few weekshad secured the conquest of italy, but the
war was in fact prolonged for three yearsand a half from this time by domestic treachery, foreign invasion, and the almost absoluteimpregnability of ravenna. i. at the head of the soldiers of odovacarwho had apparently with enthusiasm accepted the leadership of his younger and more brilliantrival, was a certain tufa, master of the soldiery among the få“derati either he had extraordinarypowers of deception, or theodoric, short of generals, accepted his professions of loyaltywith most unwise facility; for so it was that the ostrogothic king entrusted to tufa's generalshipthe army which assuredly he ought to have led himself to the siege of ravenna. whentufa arrived at faventia, about eighteen miles from ravenna, his old master came forth tomeet him; the instinct of loyalty to odovacar
revived (if indeed he had not all along beenplaying a part in his alleged desertion), and tufa carried over, apparently, the largerpart of the army under his command to the service of theodoric's rival. worst of all,he surrendered to his late master the chief members of his staff the so-called comites(henchmen) of theodoric some of whom had probably helped him in his early adventure againstsingidunum, and had shared his hardships in many a weary march through thrace and macedonia.these men were all basely murdered by odovacar, a deed which theodoric inwardly determinedshould never be forgiven (492). such an event as the defection of tufa, carryingwith him a considerable portion of his troops, was a great blow to the ostrogothic cause.some time later another and similar event
took place. frederic the rugian, whose fatherhad been dethroned, and who had been himself driven into exile by the armies of odovacar,for some unexplained and most mysterious reason, quitted the service of theodoric and enteredthat of his own deadliest enemy. the sympathy of scoundrels seems to have drawn him intoa special intimacy with tufa, with whom he probably wandered up and down through lombardy(as we now call it) and venetia, robbing and slaying in the name of odovacar, but not caringto share his hardships in blockaded and famine-stricken ravenna. fortunately, the nemesis which sooften waits on the friendship of bad men was not wanting in this case. the two traitorsquarrelled about the division of the spoil and a battle took place between them, in thevalley of the adige above verona, in which
tufa was slain. frederic, with his rugiancountrymen, occupied the strong city of ticinum (pavia), where they spent two dreadful years,"their minds", says an eye-witness, in after-time the bishop of that city, "were full of cruelenergy which prompted them to daily crimes. in truth, they thought that each day was wastedwhich they had not made memorable by some sort of outrage". in 494, with the generalpacification of italy, they disappear from view: and we may conjecture, though we arenot told, that pavia was taken, and that frederic received his deserts at the hands of theodoric. ii. in the year 490 gundobad, king of theburgundians, crossed the alps and descended into italy to mingle in the fray as an antagonistof theodoric. in the same year, probably at
the same time, alaric ii., king of the visigoths,entered italy as his ally. a great battle was fought on the river adda, ten miles eastof milan, in which odovacar, who had emerged from the shelter of ravenna, was again completelydefeated. he fled once more to ravenna, which he never again quitted. while these operations were proceeding, theodoric'sown family and the non-combatants of the ostrogothic nation were in safe shelter, though in somewhatnarrow quarters, in the strong city of pavia, whose bishop, epiphanius, was the greatestsaint of his age, and one for whom theodoric felt an especial veneration. no doubt theymust have left that city before the evil-minded rugians entered it (492), but we hear nothingof the circumstances of their flight or removal.
as for the burgundian king, he does not seemto have been guided by any high considerations of policy in his invasion of italy, and havingbeen induced to conclude a treaty with theodoric, he returned to his own royal city of lyonswith goodly spoil and a long train of hapless captives torn from the fields of liguria. iii. these disturbing elements being clearedaway, we may now turn our attention to the true key of the position and the central eventof the war, the siege of odovacar in ravenna. after tufa's second change of sides, and duringthe burgundian invasion of italy, there was no possibility of keeping up an ostrogothicblockade of the city of the marshes. odovacar emerged thence, won back the lower valleyof the po, and marching on milan, inflicted
heavy punishment on the city, for the welcomegiven to theodoric. in the battle of the adda, 11 august, 490, however, as has been alreadymentioned, he sustained a severe defeat, in which he lost one of his most faithful friendsand ablest counsellors, a roman noble named pierius. after his flight to ravenna, whichimmediately followed the battle of the adda, there seems to have been a general movementthroughout italy, headed by the catholic clergy, for the purpose of throwing off his yoke,and if we do not misread the obscure language of the panegyrist, this movement was accompaniedby a wide-spread popular conspiracy, somewhat like the sicilian vespers of a later day,to which the få“derati, the still surviving adherents of odovacar, scattered over theirvarious domains in italy, appear to have fallen
victims. only two cities, cã¦sena and rimini, besideravenna, now remained to odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumnof 490 to the spring of 493) ravenna was straitly besieged. corn rose to a terrible famine price(seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had tofeed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many ofthem perished of hunger. a sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits whomodovacar had by some means attracted to his standard, was repelled after a desperate encounter.during all this time theodoric, from his entrenched camp in the great pine-wood of ravenna, waswatching jealously to see that no provisions
entered the city by land, and in 492, aftertaking rimini, he brought a fleet of swift vessels thence to a harbour about six milesfrom ravenna, and thus completed its investment by sea. in the beginning of 493 the misery of thebesieged city became unendurable, and odovacar, with infinite reluctance, began to negotiatefor its surrender. his son thelane was handed over as a hostage for his fidelity, and theparleying between the two rival chiefs began on the 25th of february. on the followingday theodoric and his ostrogoths entered classis, the great naval emporium, about three milesfrom the city; and on the 27th, by the mediation of the bishop, peace was formally concludedbetween the warring kings.
the peace, the surrender of the city, theacceptance of the rule of "the new king from the east", were apparently placed under theespecial guardianship of the church. "the most blessed man, the archbishop john", saysa later ecclesiastical historian, "opened the gates of the city, 5 march, 493, whichodovacar had closed, and went forth with crosses and thuribles and the holy gospels, seekingpeace. while the priests and the rest of the clergy round him intoned the psalms, he, fallingprostrate on the ground, obtained that which he desired. he welcomed the new king comingfrom the east, and peace was granted unto him, including not only the citizens of ravenna,but all the other romans, for whom the blessed john made entreaty".
the chief clause of the treaty was that whichassured odovacar not only life but absolute equality of power with his conqueror. thefact that theodoric should have, even in appearance, consented to an arrangement so precariousand unstable, is the strongest testimony to the impregnability of ravenna, which afterthree years' strict blockade, could still be won only by so mighty a concession. butof course there was not, there could not be, any real peace on such terms between the twoqueen-bees in that swarming hive of barbarians. theodoric received information--so we aretold--that his rival was laying snares for his life, and being determined to anticipatethe blow, invited odovacar to a banquet at "the palace of the laurel-grove", on the south-eastof the city (15th march, 493). when odovacar
arrived, two suppliants knelt before him andclasped his hands while offering a feigned petition. some soldiers who had been stationedin two side alcoves stepped forth from the ambush to slay him, but at the last momenttheir hearts failed them, and they could not strike. if the deed was to be done, theodoricmust himself be the executioner or the assassin. he raised his sword to strike. "where is god?"cried the defenceless but unterrified victim. "thus didst thou to my friends", answeredtheodoric, reminding him of the treacherous murder of the "henchmen". then with a tremendous"stroke of his broadsword he clove his rival from the shoulder to the loin. the barbarianfrenzy, which the scandinavian minstrels call the "fury of the berserk", was in his heart,and with a savage laugh at his own too impetuous
blow, he shouted as the corpse fell to theground: "i think the weakling had never a bone in his body". the body of odovacar was laid in a stone coffin,and buried near the synagogue of the jews. his brother was mortally wounded while attemptingto escape through the palace-garden. his wife died of hunger in her prison. his son, sentfor safe-keeping to the king of the visigoths in gaul, afterwards escaped to italy and wasput to death by the orders of theodoric. thus perished the whole short-lived dynasty ofthe captain of the få“derati. in his long struggle for the possession ofitaly, theodoric had shown himself patient in adversity, moderate in prosperity, brave,resourceful, and enduring. but the memory
of all these noble deeds is dimmed by thecrime which ended the tragedy, a crime by the commission of which theodoric sank belowthe level of the ordinary morality of the barbarian, breaking his plighted word, andsinning against the faith of hospitality. chapter viii.civilitas. thus far we have followed the fortunes ofa teutonic warrior of the fifth century of our era, marking his strange vacillationsbetween friendship and enmity to the great civilised empire under the shattered fabricwhereof he and his people were dwelling, and neither concealing nor extenuating any ofhis lawless deeds, least of all that deed of treachery and violence by which he finallyclimbed to the pinnacle of supreme power in
italy. now, for the next thirty years, weshall have to watch the career of this same man, ruling italy with unquestioned justiceand wise forethought, making the welfare of every class of his subjects the end of allhis endeavours, and cherishing civilisation (or, as it was called in the language of hischosen counsellors, civilitas) with a love and devotion almost equal to that which religiouszeal kindles in the hearts of its surrendered votaries. the transformation is a marvellous one. successand unquestioned dominion far more often deprave and distort than ennoble and purify the moralnature of man. but something like this transformation was seen when octavian, the crafty and selfishintriguer, ripened into the wise and statesmanlike
augustus. nor have our own days been quiteignorant of a similar phenomenon, when the stern soldier-politician of germany, the manwho once seemed to delight in war and whose favourite motto had till then been "bloodand iron" having secured for his master the hegemony of europe, strove (or seems to havestriven), during twenty difficult years, to maintain peace among european nations, likeone convinced in his heart that war is the supreme calamity for mankind. it is a threadbare saying, "happy is the nationthat has no annals", and the miserable historians of the time tell us far too little about thethirty years of peace which italy enjoyed under the wise rule of theodoric; still weare told enough to enable us in some degree
to understand both what he accomplished andhow he accomplished it. and one thing which makes us accept the statements of these historianswith unquestioning belief is that they have no motive for the praises which they so freelybestow on the great ostrogoth. they are not his countrymen, nor his fellow-religionists.our chief authorities are roman and orthodox, and bitterly condemn theodoric for the persecutionof the catholics, into which, as we shall see, he was provoked in the last two yearsof his reign. still, over the grave of this dead barbarian and heretic, when they havenothing to gain by speaking well of him, they cannot forbear to praise the noble impartialityand anxious care for the welfare of his people, which, for the space of one whole generation,gave happiness to italy. it will be well to
quote here one or two of these testimonies,borne by impartial witnesses. our chief authority, who is believed to havebeen a catholic bishop of ravenna, says: "he was an illustrious man, and full of good-willtowards all. he reigned thirty-three (really thirty-two) years, and during thirty of theseyears so great was the happiness of italy that even the wayfarers were at peace. forhe did nothing wrong. so did he govern the two nations, the goths and romans, as if theywere one people, belonging himself to the arian sect, yet he ordained that the civiladministration should remain for the romans as it had been under their emperors. he gavepresents and rations to the people, yet, though he found the treasury ruined, he brought itround, by his own hard work, into a flourishing
state. he attempted nothing (during thesefirst thirty years) against the catholic faith. exhibiting games in the circus and amphitheatre,he received from the romans the names of trajan and valentinian (the happy days of which mostprosperous emperors he did in truth seek to restore), and, at the same time, the gothsrendered true obedience to their valiant king, according to the edict which he had promulgatedfor them. "he gave one of his daughters in marriageto the king of the visigoths in gaul, another to the son of the burgundian king; his sisterto the king of the vandals, and his niece to the king of the thuringians. thus he pleasedall the nations round him, for he was a lover of manufactures and a great restorer of cities.he restored the aqueduct of ravenna, which
trajan had built; and again, after a longinterval, brought water into the city. he completed, but did not dedicate, the palace,and finished the porticoes round it. at verona he erected baths and a palace, and constructeda portico from the gate to the palace. the aqueduct, which had been long destroyed, herenewed, and brought in water through it. he also surrounded the city with new walls.at ticinum (pavia) too he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, and erected wallsround the city. on many other cities also he bestowed similar benefits. "thus he so charmed the nations near him thatthey entered into a league with him, hoping that he would be their king. the merchants,too, from divers provinces, flocked to his
dominions, for so great was the order whichhe maintained, that if any one wished to leave gold or silver on his land (in his countryhouse) it was as safe as in a walled city. a proof of this was the fact that he nevermade gates for any-city of italy, and the gates already existing were not closed. anyone who had business to transact could do it as safely by night as by day. "in his time men bought wheat at 60 pecksfor a solidus (12 shillings a quarter), and 30 amphor㦠of wine for the same price (2s.4d. a gallon)". so far the supposed bishop of ravenna. nowlet us hear procopius, an official in the imperial army which brought the ostrogothickingdom to ruin:
"theodoric was an extraordinary lover of justice,and adhered rigorously to the laws. he guarded the country from barbarian invasions, anddisplayed the greatest intelligence and prudence. there was in his government scarcely a traceof injustice towards his subjects, nor would he permit any of those under him to attemptanything of the kind, except that the goths divided among themselves the same proportionof the land of italy which odovacar had allotted to his partisans. thus then theodoric wasin name a tyrant (that is, an irregular, because barbarian, ruler), but in deed a true king(or emperor), not inferior to the best of his predecessors, and his popularity grewgreatly, both among goths and italians, and this fact (that he was popular with both nations)was contrary to the ordinary fashion of human
affairs. for generally, as different classesin the state want different things, the government which pleases one party has to incur the odiumof those who do not belong to it. "after a reign of thirty-seven years he died,having been a terror to all his enemies, but leaving a deep regret for his loss in thehearts of his subjects". so much for the general aspect of theodoric'srule in italy. now let us consider rather more in detail what was his precise positionin that country. and first as to the title by which he was known. it is singularly difficultto say what this title was. it is quite clear that theodoric never claimed to be emperorof the west, the successor of honorius and augustulus. but there are grave reasons fordoubting whether he called himself, as has
been often stated, "king of italy". in thefifth century territorial titles of this kind were, if not absolutely unknown, at leastvery uncommon. the various teutonic rulers generally took their titles from the nationswhom they led to battle, gaiseric being "king of the vandals and alans", gundobad, "kingof the burgundians", clovis, "king of the franks", and so forth. upon the whole, itseems most probable that theodoric's full title was "king of the goths and romans initaly" and that the allusion to "romans" in his title explains some of the conflict oftestimony as to the source from whence he derived his title of king. it is quite truethat a teutonic sovereign like theodoric, sprung from a long line of royal ancestors,and chosen by the voice of his people to succeed
their king, his father, would not need, andexcept under circumstances of great national humiliation would not accept, any grant ofthe kingly title, as ruler over his own nation, from the augustus at new rome. but when itcame to claiming by the same title the obedience of romans as well as goths, especially inthat country which had once been the heart of the empire,--theodoric, king of the goths,might well be anxious to strain all the resources of diplomacy in order to obtain from the legitimatehead of the roman world the confirmation of those important words "and romans", whichappeared in his regal title. in the year 490, probably soon after the battleof the adda, theodoric sent faustus, an eminent roman noble and "chief of the senate", onan embassy to zeno, "hoping that he might
receive from that emperor permission to clothehimself with the royal mantle". it will be remembered that in the compact between romanand teuton, which preceded theodoric's invasion of italy, words had been used which impliedthat he was only to rule as "locum tenens" of the emperor till he himself should arriveto claim the supremacy. now, with that conquest apparently almost completed, and with hisrival fast sealed up in ravenna, theodoric sends a report of his success of the enterpriseundertaken "on joint account", and desires to legalise his position by a formal grantof the mantle of royalty from the autocrat of the world. the time of the arrival of theodoric's embassyat constantinople was unpropitious, as the
emperor zeno was already stricken by mortalillness. on the 9th of april, 491, he died, and was succeeded by the handsome but elderlylife-guardsman, anastasius, to whom ariadne, widow of zeno, gave her hand in marriage.the rights and duties which pertained to the compact between theodoric and zeno were perhapsconsidered as of only personal obligation. it might plausibly be contended by the emperor'ssuccessor that he was not bound to recognise the new royalty of his predecessor's, "filiusin arma", and by theodoric that the conditional estate in italy granted to him to hold "tillzeno should himself arrive" became absolute, now that by the death of zeno that event wasrendered impossible. however this may be, we hear no more of negotiations between thegothic camp and the court of constantinople
till the death of odovacar(493). then thegoths, apparently in some great assembly of the nation, "confirmed theodoric to themselvesas king", without waiting for the orders of the new emperor. whatever this ceremony mayhave imported, it must have in some way conferred on theodoric a fuller kingship, perhaps moreof a territorial and less of a tribal sovereignty than he had possessed when he was wanderingwith his followers over the passes of the balkans. no messages or embassies, however, could yetsoothe the wounded pride of anastasius. there was deep resentment at the eastern court,and for three or four years there seems to have been a rupture of diplomatic relationsbetween constantinople and ravenna. at length,
in the year 497, theodoric sent another ambassador,festus, (also an eminent roman noble and chief of the senate,) to anastasius. this messenger,more successful than his predecessor, "made peace with anastasius concerning theodoric'spremature assumption of royalty, and brought back all the ornaments of the palace whichodovacar had transmitted to constantinople". (497) this final ratification of the ostrogoth'ssovereignty in italy is so vaguely described to us that it is difficult to see how muchit may have implied. probably it was to a certain extent convenient to both partiesthat it should be left vague. the emperor would not abandon any hope, however shadowy,of one day winning back full possession of "the hesperian kingdom". the king might hopethat, in the course of years or generations,
he himself, or his descendants, might severthe last link of dependence on constantinople, perhaps might one day establish themselvesas full-blown emperors of rome. the claims thus left in vagueness were the seeds of futuredifficulties, and bore fruit forty years later in a bloody and desolating war, but meanwhilethe position, as far as we can ascertain it, seems to have been something like this. theodoric,"king of the goths and romans in italy", was absolute ruler of the country de facto, exceptin so far as the gothic nation, assembled under arms at its periodical parades, mayhave exercised some check on his full autocracy. he made peace and war, he nominated the highofficers of state, even one of the two consuls, who still kept alive the fiction of the romanrepublic; he probably regulated the admissions
to the senate; he was even in the last resortarbiter of the fortunes of the roman church. on the other hand, he did not himself coingold or silver money with his effigy; but in this he was not singular, for it was nottill a generation or two had elapsed that any of the new barbarian royalties thoughtit worth while to claim this attribute of sovereignty. though dressed in the purpleof royalty, by assuming the title of king only, he accepted a position somewhat lowerthan that of the emperor of the new rome. he sent the names of the consuls whom he hadappointed to constantinople, an act which might be represented as a mere piece of formalcourtesy, or as a request for their ratification, according to the point of view of the narrator.with a similar show of courtesy, or submission,
the accession of theodoric's descendants tothe throne was, when the occasion arose, notified to the then reigning emperor. and there weremany limitations which the good sense and statesmanlike feeling of the ostrogothic kingimposed on his exercise of the royal power, but which might be, perhaps were, representedas part of the fundamental compact between him and the emperor of rome. such were theemployment of men of roman birth by preference, in all the great offices of the state; absoluteimpartiality between the rival creeds, catholic and arian (to the latter of which theodorichimself was an adherent); and a determination to abstain as much as possible from all freshlegislation which might modify the rights and duties of the roman inhabitants of italy,the legislative power being chiefly exercised
in order to provide for those new cases whicharose out of the settlement of so large a number of new-comers of alien blood withinthe borders of the land. after all the attempts which have been madeto explain and to systematise the relation between the new barbarian royalties and theold and tottering empire, much remains which is absolutely incapable of definition, butperhaps an historical parallel, though not strictly accurate, may somewhat aid our comprehensionof the subject. it is well-known how for the first hundred years of the english raj inindia the power which actually resided in an association of traders, the old east indiacompany, and which was wielded under their orders by a clive, a hastings, or a wellesley,was theoretically vested in an emperor, the
descendant of "the great mogul", who livedin seclusion in his palace at delhi, and who, though nominally all-powerful, had really,as macaulay has said, "less power to help or to hurt than the youngest civil servantof the company". now assuredly anastasius and justin, the imperial contemporaries oftheodoric, were no mere phantoms of royalty, like the last mogul emperors of delhi, butas far as actual efficacious share in the government of italy went, the parallel holdsgood. such deference as was paid to their name and authority was a mere courteous form;the whole power of the state--subject, as has been said, to the limitations still imposedby the popular institutions of the goths--was gathered up in the hands of theodoric.
what then, it may be said, was gained by keepingup the fiction that italy still formed part of the roman empire, and that theodoric ruledin any sense as the delegate of the emperor? for the present, much (though at the costof future entanglements and complications), since it facilitated that union of "romania"and "barbaricum", which was the next piece of work obviously necessary for europe. ifthe reader will recur to that noble sentence of ataulfus, which was quoted in the introductionto this book, he will see that the reasoning of that great chieftain took this shape: "acommonwealth must have laws. the goths, accustomed for generations to their tameless freedom,have not acquired the habit of obedience to the laws. till they acquire that habit, theadministration of the state must be left in
roman hands, and all the authority of theking must be used in defence of roman organisation". these principles, though he may never haveread the passage of orosius which expounded them, were essentially the principles of theodoric.so long as he remained in antagonism to the empire, he could not reckon on the heartyco-operation of roman officials in the task of government. the brave, through patriotism,and the cowardly, through fear of coming retribution, would decline to be known as his adherents,and would stand aloof from his work of re-organization. but when it was known that even the greataugustus at constantinople, "our lord anastasius, father of his country" (as the coins styledhim), recognised the royalty of theodoric, and had in some sort confided to him the governmentof italy, all the great army of civil servants,
who performed the functions of that highlyspecialised organism, the roman state, could, without fear and without reproach, acceptoffice under the new-comer, and could look forward again, as they had done before, toa fortunate official career, to the honours and emoluments which were the recognised rewardof the successful civil servant. in the next chapter, i shall describe witha little more detail the character and the duties of some of these roman officials. forthe present we will rather consider the nature of the work which theodoric accomplished throughtheir instrumentality. we have already heard from a nearly contemporary chronicler, thestory of some of the great civilising works which he wrought in the wasted land, the aqueductsof ravenna and verona, the walls of verona
and pavia, the baths, the palace, and theamphitheatre. more important for the great mass of his subjects was the perfect securitywhich he gave to the merchant for his commerce, to the husbandman for the fruit of his toil.corn, as we have seen, sank to the extraordinarily low price of twelve shillings a quarter. butthis low price did not mean, as it might in our country, the depression of the agriculturalinterest, through the rivalry of the foreign producer. on the contrary, the great economicsymptom of theodoric's reign--and under the circumstances a most healthy symptom--wasthat italy, from a corn-importing became a corn-exporting country. under the old emperors,whose rule was a most singular blending of autocracy and demagogy, in fact a kind ofcrowned socialism, every nerve had been strained
to bring from alexandria and carthage thecorn which was distributed gratuitously to the idle population of rome. under such hopelesscompetition as this, together with the demoralising influence of slave labour, large tracts ofitaly had actually gone out of cultivation. now, by political changes, the merit of whichmust not be claimed for the ostrogothic government, both egypt and africa had become unavailablefor the supply of the necessities of rome. theodoric and his ministers may however bepraised for that prevalence of order and good government, which enabled the long prostrateagriculture of italy to spring up like grass after a summer shower. the conditions of prosperitywere there, and only needed the removal of adverse influences and mistaken benevolenceto bring forth their natural fruit. the grain-largesses
to the people of rome were indeed still continuedin a modified form, but the stores thus dispensed seemed to have been brought almost entirelyfrom italy. when gaul was visited with famine, the ship-masters along the whole western coastof italy were permitted and encouraged to take the surplus of the italian crops to thesuffering province. even in a time of dearth and after war had begun, corn was sold bythe state to the impoverished inhabitants of liguria at sixteen shillings a quarter.altogether we seem justified in asserting that the economic condition of italy, bothas to the producers and the consumers of its food-supplies, was more prosperous under theodoricthan it had been for centuries before, or than it was to be for centuries afterwards.
i have already made some reference to aqueducts,which were among the noblest and most beneficial works that any ruler of italy could accomplish.ravenna, situated in an unhealthy swamp where water fit for drinking was proverbially dearerthan wine was pre-eminently dependent on such supplies of the precious fluid as could bebrought fresh and sparkling from the distant apennines. theodoric issued an order to allthe farmers dwelling along the course of the aqueduct to eradicate the shrubs growing byits side, which would otherwise fix their roots in the bed of the stream, loosen themasonry, and cause many a dangerous leak. "this being done", said the secretary of state,"we shall again have baths that we may look upon with pleasure, water which will cleanse,not stain, water after using which we shall
not require again to wash ourselves: drinking-water,the mere sight of which will not take away our appetite". similar care was needed topreserve the great aqueducts which were the glory of imperial rome, as even now theirgiant arches, striding for miles over the desolate campagna, are her most impressivemonument. at rome also the officer who was specially charged with the maintenance ofthese noble works, the "count of the aqueducts", was exhorted to show his zeal by rooting uphurtful trees, and by at once repairing any part of the masonry that seemed to be fallinginto decay through age. he was warned against peculation and against connivance at the fraudswhich often marked the distribution of the water supply, and he was assured that thestrengthening of the aqueducts would constitute
his best claim on the favour of his sovereign. but while in most parts of italy water isa boon eagerly craved for, in some places it is a superabundance and a curse. at terracinaon the latian coast there still stands in the piazza a slab of marble with a long inscription,setting forth that "the most illustrious lord and renowed king, theodoric, triumphant conqueror,ever augustus, born for the good of the commonwealth, guardian of liberty and propagator of theroman name, subduer of the nations", ordered that nineteen miles of the appian way, beingthe portion extending from three-bridges (tripontium) to terracina should be cleared of the waterswhich had flowed together upon it from the marshes on either side. a nobleman of thevery highest rank, consul, patrician, and
prefect of the city, cã¦cina maurus basiliusdecius, successfully accomplished this work under the orders of his sovereign, and forthe safety thus afforded to travellers, was rewarded by a large grant of the newly-drainedlands. we have seen that theodoric's anonymous panegyristcalls him "a lover of manufactures and a great restorer of cities". of the manufactures encouragedby the ostrogothic king, we should have been glad to receive a fuller account. all thati have been able to discover in the published state-papers of himself and his successorsat all bearing on this subject is some instructions with reference to the opening of gold minesin bruttii (the modern calabria), and iron mines in dalmatia, a concession of potteriesto three senators, who are promised the royal
protection if they will prosecute the workdiligently, and permission to another nobleman to erect a row of workshops or manufactoriesoverlooking the roman forum. the whole tenour of these state papers, however, shows thatpublic works were being diligently pushed on in every quarter of italy, and is entirelyconsistent with the praise awarded to theodoric "as a lover of manufactures". his zeal for the restoration of cities isby the same documents abundantly manifested. at one time we find him giving orders forthe transport of marble slabs and columns to ravenna, at another, directing the repairof the walls of catana, now rebuilding the walls and towers of arles, and now relievingthe distress of naples and nola, which have
been half ruined by an eruption of vesuvius.his care for the adornment of the cities of italy with works of art is manifest, as wellas his zeal for their material enrichment. he hears with great disgust that a brazenstatue has been stolen from the city of como. "it is vexatious" says his secretary, "thatwhile we are labouring to increase the ornaments of our cities, those which antiquity has bequeathedto us should be diminished by such deeds as this". a reward of 100 aurei (â£60), and afree pardon is offered to any accomplice who will assist in the discovery of the chiefoffender. but it is above all for rome, for the gloryand magnificence of rome, that this ostrogothic king, in a certain sense the kinsman and successorof her first ravager, alaric, shows a tender
solicitude. her aqueducts, as we have seen,are to be repaired, her cloacã¦, those still existing memorials of the civilisation ofthe earliest, the regal, rome, are to be carefully upheld; the thefts of brass and lead fromthe public buildings, which have become frequent during the disorders of the past century,are to be sternly repressed; a spirited patrician who has restored the mighty theatre of pompeiusis encouraged and rewarded, the prefect of the city is stimulated to greater activityin the repair of all the ruined buildings therein. "in rome, praised beyond all othercities by the world's mouth, it is not right that anything should be found either sordidor mediocre". in all these counsels for the material well-beingof italy, and for the repair of the ravages
of anarchy and war, theodoric was undoubtedlymuch assisted by his ministers of roman extraction, some of whom i shall endeavour to portrayin a later chapter. still, though the details of the work may have been theirs, it cannotbe denied that the initiative was his. a barbarian, thinking only barbarous thoughts, lookingupon war and the chase as the only employments worthy of a free man, would not have chosensuch counsellors, and, if he had found them in his service, would not have kept them.therefore, remembering those years of boyhood, which he passed at constantinople, at a timewhen the character is most susceptible of strong and lasting impressions, i cannot doubtthat notwithstanding the frequent relapses into barbarism which marked his early manhood,he was at heart a convert to civilisation,
that his desire was to obtain for "the hesperianland" all that he had seen best and greatest in the social condition of the city by thebosphorus, and that his secretary truly expressed his deepest and inmost thoughts when he madehim speak of himself as one "whose whole care was to change everything for the better. i shall close this chapter with a few anecdotes--fartoo few have been preserved to us--which serve to show what manner of man he appeared tohis contemporaries. again i borrow from the anonymous author, the supposed bishop of ravenna. he was, we are told, unlettered, though fondof the converse of learned men, and so clumsy with his pen that after ten years of reigninghe was still unable to form without assistance
the four letters (theo) which were affixedas his sign-manual to documents issued in his name. in order to overcome this difficultyhe had a golden plate prepared with the necessary letters perforated in it, and drew his penthrough the holes. but, though he was unlettered, his shrewdness and mother-wit caused bothhis sayings and doings to be much noted and remembered by his subjects. in one difficultcase which came before him, he discovered the truth by a sudden device which probablyreminded the bystanders of the judgment of solomon, a young man who as a child had beenbrought up by a friend of his deceased father, returned to his home and claimed a share ofhis inheritance from his mother. she, however, was on the point of marriage with a secondhusband, and under her suitor's influence
she disowned the son whom she had at firstwelcomed with joy and had entertained for a month in her house. as the suitor persistedin his demand that the son should be turned out of doors, and the son refused to leavehis paternal abode, the case came before the king's court, where the widow still persistedin her assertion that the young man was not her son, but a stranger whom she had entertainedmerely out of motives of hospitality. suddenly the king turned round upon her and said: "thisyoung man is to be thy husband, i command thee to marry him". the horror-stricken motherthen confessed that he was indeed her son. some of theodoric's sayings passed into proverbsamong the common people. one was: "he who has gold and he who has a devil can neitherof them hide what he has got" another: "the
roman when in misery imitates the goth andthe goth in comfort imitates the roman". we have unfortunately no description of thegreat ostrogoth's outward appearance, though the indications in his history would leadus to suppose that he was a man of stalwart form and soldierly bearing. nor is this deficiencyadequately made up to us by his coins, since, as has been already said, the gold and silverpieces which were circulated in his reign bore the impress of the eastern emperor, andthe miserable little copper coins which bear his effigy do not pretend to portraiture. chapter ix.roman officials--cassiodorus. i have said that one of the most importantcharacteristics of theodoric's government
of italy was that it was conducted in accordancewith the traditions of the empire and administered mainly by officials trained in the imperialschool. to a certain extent the same thing is true of all the teutonic monarchies whicharose in the fifth century on the ruins of the empire. in dealing with the needs andsettling the disputes of the large, highly-organised communities, into whose midst they had pouredthemselves, it was not possible, if it had been desirable, for the rulers to remain satisfiedwith the simple, sometimes barbarous, principles of law and administration which had sufficedfor the rude farmer-folk who dwelt in isolated villages beyond the rhine and the danube.nor was this necessity disliked by the rulers themselves. they soon perceived that the romanlaw, with its tendency to derive all power
from the imperial head of the state, and theroman official staff, an elaborate and well-organised hierarchy, every member of which receivedorders from one above him and transmitted orders to those below, were far more favourableto their own prerogative and gave them a far higher position over against their followersand comrades in war, than the institutions which had prevailed in the forests of germany.hence, as i have said, all the new barbarian royalties, even that of the vandals in africa(in some respects more anti-roman than any other), preserved much of the laws and machineryof the roman empire; but theodoric's italian kingdom preserved the most of all. it mightin fact almost be looked upon as a mere continuation of the old imperial system, only with a strong,laborious, martial goth at the head of affairs,
able and willing to keep all the members ofthe official hierarchy sternly to their work, instead of the ruler whom the last three generationshad been accustomed to behold, a man decked with the purple and diadem, but too weak,too indolent, too nervously afraid of irritating some powerful captain of få“derati, or somewealthy roman noble, to be able to do justice to all classes of his subjects. the composition of the official hierarchyof the empire is, from various sources, almost as fully known to us as that of any stateof modern europe. pre-eminent in dignity over all the rest rosethe "illustrious" prã¦torian prefect, the vicegerent of the sovereign, a man who heldtowards emperor or king nearly the same position
which a grand vizier holds towards a turkishsultan. like his sovereign he wore a purple robe (which reached however only to his knees,not to his feet), and he drove through the streets in a lofty official chariot. it wasfor him to promulgate the imperial laws, sometimes to put forth edicts of his own. he proclaimedwhat taxes were to be imposed each year, and their produce came into his "prã¦torian chest".he suggested to his sovereign the names of the governors of the provinces, paid themtheir salaries, and exercised a general superintendence over them, having even power to depose themfrom their offices. and lastly, he was the highest judge of appeal in the land, eventhe emperor himself having generally no power to reverse his sentences.
there was another "illustrious" minister,who, during this century both in the eastern and western empire, was always treading onthe heels of the prã¦torian prefect, and trying to rob him of some portion of his power. thiswas the master of the offices the intermediary between the sovereign and the great mass ofthe civil servants, to whom the execution of his orders was entrusted. a swarm of agentesin rebus (king's messengers, bailiffs, sheriff's officers; we may call them by all these designations)roved through the provinces, carrying into effect the orders of the sovereign, alwaysmagnifying their "master's" dignity, (whence they derived their epithet of "magistriani",)and seeking to depress the prã¦torian cohorts, who discharged somewhat similar duties underthe prã¦torian prefect. the master of the
offices, besides sharing the counsels of hissovereign in relation to foreign states, had also the arsenals under his charge, and therewas transferred to him from his rival, the prefect, the superintendence of the cursuspublicus, the great postal service of the empire. again, somewhat overlapping, as it seems tous, the functions of the master of the offices, came the "illustrious" quã¦stor, the head-rhetoricianof the state, the official whose business it was to put the thoughts of the sovereigninto fitting and eloquent words, either when he was replying to the ambassadors of foreignpowers, or when he was issuing laws and proclamations to his own subjects. as his duties and qualificationswere of a more personal kind than those of
his two brother-ministers already described,he had not like them a large official staff waiting upon his orders. there were two great financial ministers,the count of sacred largesses ("sacred", of course, is equivalent to "imperial"), andthe count of private domains, whose duties practically related in the former case tothe personal, in the latter to the real, estate of the sovereign. or perhaps, for it is difficultexactly to define the nature of their various duties, it would be better to think of thecount of sacred largesses as the imperial chancellor of the exchequer, and the countof private domains as the chief commissioner of woods and forests.
the superintendent of the sacred dormitorywas the grand chamberlain of the empire, and commanding, as he did, the army of pages,grooms of the bed-chamber, vestiaries, and life-guardsmen, who ministered to the myriadwants of an arcadius or a honorius, he was not the least important among the chief officersof the state. these great civil ministers, eight in numberunder the western emperors (for there were three prã¦torian prefects, one for the gauls,one for italy, and one for the city of rome), formed, with the military officers of highestrank (generally five in number), the innermost circle of "illustres", who may be likenedto the cabinet of the emperor. at this time the cabinet of illustres may have been smallerby one or two members, on account of the separation
of the gaulish provinces from rome, but weare not able to speak positively on this point. nearly every one of these great ministersof state had under him a large, ambitious, and often highly-paid staff of subordinates,who were called his officium. the civil service was at least as regular and highly specialiseda profession under the emperors and under theodoric as it is in any modern state. itis possible that we should have to go to the celestial empire of china to find its fittingrepresentative. a large number of singularii, rationalii,clavicularii, and the like (whom we should call policemen, subordinate clerks, and gaolers)formed the "unlettered staff" (militia illiterata), who stood on the lowest stage of the bureaucraticpyramid. above these was the lettered staff,
beginning with the humble chancellor (cancellarius),who sat by the cancelli (latticework), at the bottom of the court (to prevent importunatesuitors from venturing too far), and rising to the dignified princeps or cornicularius,who was looked upon as equal in rank to a count, and who expected to make an incomeof not less than â£600 a year, equivalent to two or three times that amount in our day. all this great hierarchy of officials wieldedpowers derived, mediately or immediately, from the emperor (or in the ostrogothic monarchyfrom the king), and great as was their brilliancy in the eyes of the dazzled multitudes whocrouched before them, it was all reflected from him, who was the central sun of theiruniverse. but there were still two institutions
which were in theory independent of emperoror king, which were yet held venerable by men, and which had come down from the daysof the great world-conquering republic, or the yet earlier days of romulus and numa.these two institutions were the consulship and the senate. the consuls, as was said in an earlier chapter,still appeared to preside over the roman republic, as they had in truth presided, wielding betweenthem the full power of a king, when brutus and collatinus, a thousand years before theodoric'scommencement of the siege of ravenna, took their seat upon the curule chairs, and donnedthe trabea of the consul. still, though utterly shorn of its power, the glamour of the venerableoffice remained. the emperor himself seemed
to add to his dignity when he allowed himselfto be nominated as consul, and in nothing was the cupidity of the tyrant emperors andthe moderation of the patriot emperors better displayed than in the number of consulshipswhich they claimed or forbore from claiming. ever since the virtual division of the empireinto an eastern and western portion, it had been usual, though not absolutely obligatory,for one consul to be chosen out of each half of the orbis romanus, and in reading the contemporarychronicles we can almost invariably tell to which portion the author belongs by observingto which consul's name he gives the priority. as has been already stated, after the resumptionof friendly relations between ravenna and constantinople, theodoric, while naming thewestern consul, sent a courteous notification
of the fact to the emperor, by whom his nominationseems to have been always accepted without question. the great ostrogoth, having onceworn the consular robes and distributed largess to "the roman people" in the streets of constantinople,does not seem to have cared a second time to assume that ancient dignity, but in theyear 519, towards the end of his reign, he named his son-in-law, eutharic, consul, andthe splendour of eutharic's year of office was enhanced by the fact that he had the thenreigning emperor, justin, for his colleague. as for the senate, it too was still in appearancewhat it had ever been,--the highest council in the state, the assembly of kings whichoverawed the ambassador of pyrrhus, the main-spring, or, if not the main-spring, at any rate thebalance-wheel, of the administrative machine.
this it was in theory, for there had neverbeen any formal abolition of its existence or abrogation of its powers. in practice itwas just what the sovereign, whether called emperor or king, allowed it to be. a self-willedand arbitrary monarch, like caligula or domitian, would reduce its functions to a nullity. awise and moderate emperor, like trajan or marcus aurelius, would consult it on all importantstate-affairs, and, while reserving to himself both the power of initiation and that of finalcontrol, would make of it a real council of state, a valuable member of the governingbody of the empire. the latter seems to have been the policy of theodoric. probably thevery fact of his holding a somewhat doubtful position towards the emperor at constantinoplemade him more willing to accept all the moral
support that could be given him by the bodywhich was in a certain sense older and more august than any emperor, the venerable senateof rome. at any rate, the letters in which he announces to the senate the various acts,especially the nomination of the great officials of his kingdom, in which he desires theirconcurrence, are couched in such extremely courteous terms, that sometimes civility almostborders on servility. notwithstanding this, however, it is quite plain that it was alwaysthoroughly understood who was master in italy, and that any attempt on the part of the senateto wrest any portion of real power from theodoric would have been instantly and summarily suppressed. i have said that it was only by the aid ofofficials, trained in the service of the empire
that theodoric, or indeed any of the new barbariansovereigns, could hope to keep the machine of civil government in working order. we have,fortunately, a little information as to some of these officials, and an elaborate self-drawnpicture of one of them. liberius had been a faithful servant of odovacar;and had to the last remained by the sinking vessel of his fortunes. this fidelity didnot injure him in the estimation of the conqueror. when all was over, he came, with no eagerness,and with unconcealed sorrow for the death of his former master, to offer his servicesto theodoric, who gladly accepted them, and gave him at once the pre-eminent dignity ofprã¦torian prefect. his wise and economical management of the finances filled the royalexchequer without increasing the burdens of
the tax-payer, and it is probable that theearly return of prosperity to italy, which was described in the last chapter, was, ingreat measure, due to the just and statesmanlike administration of liberius. in the delicatebusiness of allotting to the gothic warriors the third part of the soil of italy, whichseems to have been their recognised dividend on theodoric's italian speculation, he soacquitted himself as to win the approbation of all. it is difficult for us to understandhow such a change of ownership can have brought with it anything but heart-burning and resentment.but (1) there are not wanting indications that, owing to evil influences both economicand political, there was actually a large quantity of good land lying unoccupied initaly in the fifth century; and (2) there
had already been one expropriation of thesame kind for the benefit of the soldiers of odovacar. in so far as this allotment ofthirds merely followed the lines of that earlier redistribution, but little of a grievancewas caused to the italian owner. an ostrogoth, the follower of theodoric, stepped into theposition of a slain scyrian or turcilingian, the follower of odovacar, and the italianowner suffered no further detriment. still there must have been some loss to the provincialsand some cases of hardship which would be long and bitterly remembered, before everyfamily which crossed the alps in the gothic waggons was safely settled in its italianhome. it is therefore not without some qualification that we can accept the statement of the officialpanegyrist of the gothic regime, who declares
that in this business of the allotment ofthe thirds "liberius joined both the hearts and the properties of the two nations, gothicand roman. for whereas neighbourhood often proves a cause of enmity, with these men communionof farms proved a cause of concord. thus the division of the soil promoted the concordof the owners; friendship grew out of the loss of the provincials, and the land gaineda defender, whose possession of part guaranteed the quiet enjoyment of the remainder". itis possible that there was some foundation of truth for the last statement. after thefearful convulsions through which the whole western empire had passed, and with the strangeparalysis of the power of self-defence which had overtaken the once brave and hardy populationof italy, it is possible that the presence,
near to each considerable italian landowner,of a goth whose duty to his king obliged him to defend the land from foreign invasion,and to suppress with a strong hand all robbery and brigandage, may have been felt in somecases as a compensation even for whatever share of the soil of italy was transferredto goth from roman by the chief commissioner, liberius. two eminent romans, whom in the early yearsof his reign theodoric placed in high offices of state, were the two successive ambassadorsto constantinople, faustus and festus. both seem to have held the high dignity of prã¦torianprefect. we do not, however, hear much as to the career of festus, and what we hearof faustus is not altogether to his credit.
he had been for several years practicallythe prime minister of theodoric, when in an evil hour for his reputation he coveted theestate of a certain castorius, whose land adjoined his own. deprived of his patrimony,castorius appealed, not in vain, to the justice of theodoric, whose ears were not closed,as an emperor's would probably have been, to the cry of a private citizen against apowerful official. "we are determined", says theodoric, in his reply to the petition ofcastorius, "to assist the humble and to repress the violence of the proud. if the petitionof castorius prove to be well-founded, let the spoiler restore to castorius his propertyand hand over besides another estate of equal value. if the magnificent faustus have employedany subordinate in this act of injustice,
bring him to us bound with chains that hemay pay for the outrage in person, if he cannot do so in purse. if on any future occasionthat now known craftsman of evil (faustus) shall attempt to injure the aforesaid castorius,let him be at once fined fifty pounds of gold (â£2,000). greatest of all punishments willbe the necessity of beholding the untroubled estate of the man whom he sought to ruin.behold herein a deed which may well chasten and subdue the hearts of all our great dignitarieswhen they see that not even a prã¦torian prefect is permitted to trample on the lowly, andthat when we put forth our arm to help, such an one's power of injuring the wretched failshim. from this may all men learn how great is our love of justice, since we are willingto diminish even the power of our judges,
that we may increase the contentment of ourown conscience". this edict was followed by a letter to the illustrious faustus himself,in which that grasping governor was reminded that human nature frequently requires a change,and permission was graciously given him to withdraw for four months into the country.at the end of that time he was without fail to return to the capital, since no roman senatorought to be happy if permanently settled anywhere but at rome. it is tolerably plain that thefour months' villeggiatura was really a sentence of temporary banishment, and we may probablyconclude that the magnificent faustus never afterwards held any high position under theodoric. the letters announcing the king's judgmentin this matter, like all the other extant
state-papers of theodoric, were written bya man who was probably by the fall of faustus raised a step in the official hierarchy, andwho was certainly for the last twenty years of the reign of theodoric one of the mostconspicuous of his roman officials. this was cassiodorus, or, to give him his full name,magnus aurelius cassiodorus senator, a man, whose life and character require to be describedin some detail. cassiodorus was sprung from a noble romanfamily, which had already given three of its members in lineal succession (all bearingthe name cassiodorus) to the service of the state. his great-grandfather, of "illustrious"rank, defended sicily and calabria from the incursions of the vandals. his grandsire,a tribune in the army, was sent by the emperor
valentinian iii. on an important embassy toattila. his father filled first one and then the other of the two highest financial officesin the state under odovacar. on the overthrow of that chieftain, he, like liberius, transferredhis services to theodoric, who employed him as governor first of sicily, then of calabria,and finally, about the year 500, conferred upon him the highest dignity of all, thatof prã¦torian prefect. the ancestral possessions of the cassiodoriwere situated m that southernmost province, sometimes likened to the toe of italy, whichwas then called bruttii, and is now called calabria. it was a land rich in cattle, renownedfor its cheese and for its aromatic, white palmatian wine; and veins of gold were saidto be in its mountains. here, in the old greek
city of scyllacium (sguillace), "a city perchedupon a high hill overlooking the sea, sunny yet fanned by cool mediterranean breezes,and looking peacefully on the cornfields, the vineyards, and the olive-groves aroundher", cassiodorus was born, about the year 480. he was therefore probably some twelveor thirteen years of age when the long strife between odovacar and theodoric was ended bythe murder scene in the palace at ravenna. like all the young roman nobles who aspiredto the honours and emoluments of public life, cassiodorus studied philosophy and rhetoric,and, according to the standard of the age, a degraded standard, he acquired great proficiencyin both lines of study. when his father was made prã¦torian prefect (about the year 500),the young rhetorician received an appointment
as consiliarius, or assessor in the prefect'scourt, at a salary which probably did not exceed forty or fifty pounds. while he washolding this position, it fell to his lot to pronounce a laudatory oration on theodoric(perhaps on the occasion of one of his visits to rome), and the eloquence of the young consiliariusso delighted the king, that he was at once made an "illustrious" quã¦stor, thus receivingwhat we should call cabinet-rank while he was still considerably under thirty yearsof age. the quã¦stor, as has been said, was the public orator of the state. it devolvedupon him to reply to the formal harangues in which the ambassadors of foreign nationsgreeted his master, to answer the petitions of his subjects, and to see that the edictsof the sovereign were expressed in proper
terms. the post exactly fitted the intellectualtendencies of cassiodorus, who was never so happy as when he was wrapping up some commonplacethought in a garment of sonorous but turgid rhetoric; and the simple honesty of his moralnature, simple in its very vanity and honest in its childlike egotism, coupled as it waswith real love for his country and loyal zeal for her welfare, endeared him in his turnto theodoric, with whom he had many "gloriosa colloquia" (as he calls them), conversationsin which the young, learned, and eloquent roman poured forth for his master the storedup wine of generations of philosophers and poets, while the kingly barbarian doubtlessunfolded some of the propositions of that more difficult science, the knowledge of men,which he had acquired by long and arduous
years of study in the council-chamber, onthe mountain-march, and on the battle-field. we can go at once to the fountain-head forinformation as to the character of cassiodorus. when he was promoted, soon after the deathof theodoric, to the rank of prã¦torian prefect, it became his duty, as quã¦stor to the youngking athalaric (theodoric's successor), to inform himself by an official letter of thehonour conferred upon him. in writing this letter, he does not deviate from the usualcustom of describing the virtues and accomplishments which justify the new minister's promotion.why indeed should he keep silence on such an occasion? no one could know the good qualitiesof cassiodorus so well or so intimately as cassiodorus himself, and accordingly the quã¦storsets forth, with all the rhetoric of which
he had such an endless supply, the virtuesand the accomplishments which his observant eye has discovered in himself, the new prã¦torianprefect. such a course would certainly not be often pursued by a modern statesman, butthere is a pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds will be more attractivethan our present methods, the "inspired" article in a hired newspaper, or the feigned reluctanceto receive a testimonial which, till the receiver suggested it, no one had dreamed of offering. this then is how cassiodorus, in 533, describeshis past career: "you came (his young sovereign, athalaric, is supposed to be addressing him)in very early years to the dignity of quã¦stor; and mv grandfather's (theodoric's) wonderfulinsight into character was never more abundantly
proved than in your case, for he found youto be endued with rare conscientiousness, and already ripe in your knowledge of thelaws. you were in truth the chief glory of your times, and you won his favour by artswhich none could blame, for his mind, by nature anxious in all things, was able to lay asideits cares while you supported the weight of the royal counsels with the strength of youreloquence. in you he had a charming secretary, a rigidly upright judge, a minister to whomavarice was unknown. you never fixed a scandalous tariff for the sale of his benefits; you choseto take your reward in public esteem, not in riches. therefore it was that this mostrighteous ruler chose you to be honoured by his glorious friendship, because he saw youto be free from all taint of corrupt vices.
how often did he fix your place among hiswhite-haired counsellors; inasmuch as they, by the experience of years, had not come upto the point from which you had started! he found that he could safely praise your excellentdisposition, open-handed in bestowing benefits, tightly closed against the vices of avarice. "thus you passed on to the dignity of masterof the offices, which you obtained, not by a pecuniary payment, but as a testimony toyour character. in that office you were ever ready to help the quã¦stors, for when pureeloquence was needed men always resorted to you; and, in fact, when you were at hand andready to help, there was no accurate division of labour among the various offices of thestate. no one could find an occasion to murmur
aught against you, although you bore all theunpopularity which accompanies the favour of a prince. your detractors were conquered by the integrityof your life; your adversaries, bowing to public opinion, were obliged to praise evenwhile they hated you. "to the lord of the land you showed yourselfa friendly judge and an intimate minister. when public affairs no longer claimed him,he would ask you to tell him the stories in which wise men of old have clothed their maxims,that by his own deeds he might equal the ancient heroes. the courses of the stars, the ebband flow of the sea, the marvels of springing fountains,--nto all these subjects would thatmost acute questioner inquire, so that by
his diligent investigations into the natureof things, he seemed to be a philosopher in the purple". this sketch of the character of the ministerthrows light incidentally on that of the monarch who employed him. of course, as a generalrule, history cannot allow the personages with whom she deals to write their own testimonials,but in this case there is reason to think that the self-portraiture of cassiodorus isaccurate in its main outlines, though our modern taste would have suggested the employmentof somewhat less florid colouring. one literary service which cassiodorus renderedto the ostrogothic monarchy is thus described by himself, still speaking in his young king'sname and addressing the roman senate.
"he was not satisfied with extolling survivingkings, from whom their panegyrist might hope for a reward. he extended his labours to ourremote ancestry, learning from books that which the hoary memories of our old men scarcelyretained. he drew forth from their hiding-place the kings of the goths, hidden by long forgetfulness.he restored the amals in all the lustre of their lineage, evidently proving that we havekings for our ancestors up to the seventeenth generation. he made the origin of the gothspart of roman history, collecting into one wreath the flowers which had previously beenscattered over the wide plains of literature. consider, therefore, what love he showed toyou (the senate) in uttering our praises, while teaching that the nation of your sovereignhas been from ancient time a marvellous people:
so that you who from the days of your ancestorshave been truly deemed noble are also now ruled over by the long-descended progeny ofkings". these sentences relate to the "gothic history"of cassiodorus, which once existed in twelve books, but is now unfortunately lost. a hastyabridgment of it, made by an ignorant monk named jordanes, is all that now remains. eventhis, with its many faults, is a most precious monument of the early history of the teutonicinvaders of the empire, and it is from its pages that much of the information containedin the previous chapters is drawn. the object of the original statesman-author in composinghis "gothic history" is plainly stated in the above sentences. he wishes to heal thewound given to roman pride by the fact of
the supremacy in italy of a gothic lord; andin order to effect this object he strings together all that he can collect of the sagasof the gothic people, showing the great deeds of the amal progenitors of theodoric, whoselineage he traces back into distant centuries. "it is true" he seems to say to the senatorsof rome, "that you, who once ruled the world, are now ruled by an alien; but at least thatalien is no new-comer into greatness. he and his progenitors have been crowned kings forcenturies. his people, who are quartered among you and claim one-third of the soil of italy,are an old, historic people. their ancestors fought under the walls of troy; they defeatedcyrus, king of persia; they warred not ingloriously with perdiccas of macedonia".
these classical elements of the gothic historyof cassiodorus (which rest chiefly on a misunderstanding of the vague and unscientific term "scythians")are valueless for the purposes of history; but the old gothic sagas, of which he hasevidently also preserved some fragments, are both interesting and valuable. when a nationhas played so important a part on the theatre of the world as that assigned to the goths,even their legendary stories of the past are precious. whether these early amal kings foughtand ruled and migrated as the sagas represent them to have done, or not, in any case thebelief that these were their achievements was a part of the intellectual heritage ofthe gothic peoples. the songs to whose lullaby the cradle of a great nation is rocked area precious possession to the historian.
the other most important work of cassiodorusis the collection of letters called the variã¦, in twelve books. this collection containsall the chief state-papers composed by him during the period (somewhat more than thirtyyears) which was covered by his official life. five books are devoted to the letters writtenat the dictation of theodoric; two to the formul㦠or model-letters addressed to thevarious dignitaries of the state on their accession to office; three to the letterswritten in the name of theodoric's immediate successors (his grandson, daughter, and nephew);and two to those written by cassiodorus himself in his own name when he had attained the crowningdignity of prã¦torian prefect. i have already made some extracts from thiscollection of "various epistles" and the reader,
from the specimens thus submitted to him,will have formed some conception of the character of the author's style. that style is diffuseand turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the prevailing faults of the sixth century,an age of literary decay, when the language of cicero and virgil was falling into itsdotage. there is much ill-timed display of irrelevant learning, and a grievous absenceof simplicity and directness, in the "various epistles". it must be regarded as a misfortunefor theodoric that his maxims of statesmanship, which were assuredly full of manly sense andvigour, should have reached us only in such a shape, diluted with the platitudes and falserhetoric of a scholar of the decadence. still, even through all these disguises, it is easyto discern the genuine patriotism both of
the great king and of his minister, theirearnest desire that right, not might, should determine every case that came before them,their true insight into the vices and the virtues of each of the two different nationswhich now shared italy between them, their persevering endeavour to keep civilitas intact,their determination to oppose alike the turbulence of the goth and the chicane of the schemingroman. as specimens of the rhetoric of cassiodoruswhen he is trying his highest flights, the reader may care to peruse the two followingletters. the first was written to faustus the prã¦torian prefect, to complain of hisdelay in forwarding some cargoes of corn from calabria to rome:
"what are you waiting for?" says cassiodorus,writing in his master's name. "why are your ships not spreading their sails to the breeze?when the south-wind is blowing and your oarsmen are urging on your vessels, has the sucking-fish(echeneis) fastened its bite upon them through the liquid waves? or have the shell-fishesof the indian sea with similar power stayed your keels with their lips: those creatureswhose quiet touch is said to hold back, more than the tumultuous elements can possiblyurge forward? the idle bark stands still, though winged with swelling sails, and hasno way on her though the breeze is propitious; she is fixed without anchors; she is mooredwithout cables, and these tiny animals pull back, more than all such favouring powerscan propel. therefore when the subject wave
would hasten the vessel's course, it appearsthat it stands fixed on the surface of the sea: and in marvellous style the floatingship is retained immovable, while the wave is hurried along by countless currents. "but let us describe the nature of anotherkind of fish. perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness bythe touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened--eventhrough the spear by which it is itself wounded--that while still part of a living body it hangsdown benumbed without sense or motion. i think some such misfortunes must have happened tomen who are unable to move themselves. "but no. the sucking-fish of these men istheir hindering corruption. the shell-fishes
that bite them are their avaricious hearts.the torpedo that benumbs them is lying guile. with perverted ingenuity they manufacturedelays, that they may seem to have met with a run of ill-luck. "let your greatness, whom it especially behovesto take thought for such matters, cause that this be put right by speediest rebuke: lestthe famine, which will otherwise ensue, be deemed to be the child of negligence ratherthan of the barrenness of the land". the occasion of the second letter (var., x.,30.) was as follows. some brazen images of elephants which adorned the sacred streetof rome were falling into ruin, cassiodorus, writing in the name of one of theodoric'ssuccessors, to the prefect of the city, orders
that their gaping limbs should be strengthenedby hooks, and their pendulous bellies should be supported by masonry. he then proceedsto give to the admiring prefect some wonderful information as to the natural history of theelephant. he regrets that the metal effigies should be so soon destroyed, when the animalwhich they represent is accustomed to live more than a thousand years. "the living elephant" he says, "when it isonce prostrate on the ground, cannot rise unaided, because it has no joints in its feet.hence when they are helping men to fell timber, you see numbers of them lying on the earthtill men come and help them to rise. thus this creature, so formidable by its size,is really more helpless than the tiny ant.
the elephant, wiser than all other creatures,renders religious adoration to the ruler of all: also to good princes, but if a tyrantapproach, it will not pay him the homage which is due only to the virtuous. it uses its proboscis,that nose-like hand which nature has given it in compensation for its very short neck,for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him.it always walks cautiously, remembering that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which wasthe beginning of its captivity. when requested to do so, it exhales its breath, which issaid to be a remedy for the headache. "when it comes to water, it sucks up a vastquantity in its trunk, and then at the word of command squirts it forth like a shower.if any one have treated its demands with contempt,
it pours forth such a stream of dirty waterover him that one would think that a river had entered his house. for this beast hasa wonderfully long memory, both of injury and of kindness. its eyes are small but movesolemnly, so that there is a sort of royal majesty in its appearance: and it despisesscurrile jests, while it always looks with pleasure on that which is honourable". it must be admitted that if the official communicationsof modern statesmen thus anxiously combined amusement with instruction, the dull routineof "i have the honour to inform" and "i beg to remain your obedient humble servant", wouldacquire a charm of which it is now destitute. i have translated two letters which show theludicrous side of the literary character of
cassiodorus. in justice to this honest, ifsomewhat pedantic, servant of theodoric, i will close this sketch of his character witha state-paper of a better type, and one which incidentally throws some light on the socialcondition of italy under the goths. "theodoric to the illustrious neudes. (var.,v., 29.) "we were moved to sympathy by the long petitionof ocer but yet more by beholding the old hero, bereft of the blessing of sight, inasmuchas the calamities which we witness make more impression upon us than those of which weonly hear. he, poor man, living on in perpetual darkness, had to borrow the sight of anotherto hasten to our presence in order that he might feel the sweetness of our clemency,though he could not gaze upon our countenance.
"he complains that gudila and oppas (probablytwo gothic nobles or a gothic chief and his wife) have reduced him to a state of slavery,a condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he once served in our army as a freeman. we marvel that such a man should be dragged into bondage who (on account of his infirmity)ought to have been liberated by a lawful owner. it is a new kind of ostentation to claim theservices of such an one, the sight of whom shocks you, and to call that man a slave,to whom you ought rather to minister with divine compassion. "he adds also that all claims of this naturehave been already judged invalid after careful examination by count pythias, a man celebratedfor the correctness of his judgments. but
now overwhelmed by the weight of his calamity,he cannot assert his freedom by his own right hand, which in the strong man is the mosteffectual advocate of his claims. we, however, whose peculiar property it is to administerjustice indifferently, whether between men of equal or unequal condition, do by thispresent mandate decree, that if, in the judgment of the aforesaid pythias, ocer have provedhimself free-born, you shall at once remove those who are harassing him with their claims,nor shall they dare any longer to mock at the calamities of others: these people whoonce convicted ought to have been covered with shame for their wicked designs". chapter x.the arian league.
the position of theodoric in relation bothto his own subjects and to the empire was seriously modified by one fact to which hithertoi have only alluded casually, the fact that he, like the great majority of the teutonicinvaders of the empire, was an adherent of the arian form of christianity. in order toestimate at its true value the bearing of religion, or at least of religious profession,on politics, at the time of the fall of the roman state, we might well look at the conditionof another dominion, founded under the combined influence of martial spirit and religiouszeal, which is now going to pieces under our very eyes, i mean the empire of the ottomans.in the lands which are still under the sway of the sultan, religion may not be a greatspiritual force, but it is at any rate a great
political lever. when you have said that aman is a moslem or a druse, a member of the orthodox or of the catholic church, an armenianor a protestant, you have almost always said enough to define his political position. withoutthe need of additional information you have already got the elements of his civic equation,and can say whether he is a loyal subject of the porte, or whether he looks to russiaor greece, to france, austria, or england as the sovereign of his future choice. infact, as has been often pointed out, in the east at this day "religion is nationality". very similar to this was the condition ofthe ancient world at the time when the general movement of the northern nations began. thebattle with heathenism was virtually over,
christianity being the unquestioned conqueror;but the question, which of the many modifications of christianity devised by the subtle hellenicand oriental intellects should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debatedwith the keenest interest on all the shores of the mediterranean. so keen indeed was theinterest that it sometimes seems almost to have blinded the disputants to the fact thatthe roman empire, the greatest political work that the world has ever seen, was fallingin ruins around them. when we want information about the march of armies and the fall ofstates, the chroniclers to whom we turn for guidance, withholding that which we seek,deluge us with trivial talk about the squabbles of monks and bishops, about timothy the weaseland peter the fuller, and a host of other
self-seeking ecclesiastics, to whose names,to whose characters, and to whose often violent deaths we are profoundly and absolutely indifferent.but though a feeling of utter weariness comes over the mind of most readers, while watchingthe theological sword-play of the fourth and fifth centuries, the historical student cannotafford to shut his eyes altogether to the battle of the creeds, which produced resultsof such infinite importance to the crystallising process by which mediã¦val europe was formedout of the roman empire. as i have just said, theodoric the ostrogoth,like almost all the great teutonic swarm-leaders, like alaric the visigoth, like gaiseric thevandal, like gundobad the burgundian, was an arian. on the other hand, the emperors,zeno, for instance, and anastasius, and the
great majority of the population of italyand of the provinces of the empire, were catholic. what was the amount of theological divergencewhich was conveyed by these terms arian and catholic, or to speak more judicially (forthe arians averred that they were the true catholics and that their opponents were heretics)arian and athanasian? as this is not the place for a disquisition on disputed points of theology,it is sufficient to say that, while the athanasian held for truth the whole of the nicene creed,the arian--at least that type of arian with whom we are here concerned--would, in thatpart which relates to the son of god, leave out the words "being of one substance withthe father", and would substitute for them "being like unto the father in such manneras the scriptures declare". he would also
have refused to repeat the words which assertthe godhead of the holy spirit. these were important differences, but it will be seenat once that they were not so broad as those which now generally separate "orthodox" from"heterodox" theologians. the reasons which led the barbarian invadersof the empire to accept the arian form of christianity are not yet fully disclosed tous. the cause could not be an uncultured people's preference for a simple faith, for the arianchampions were at least as subtle and technical in their theology as the athanasian, and oftensurpassed them in these qualities. it is possible that some remembrances of the mythology handeddown to them by their fathers made them willing to accept a subordinate christ, a spiritualised"balder the beautiful", divine yet subject
to death, standing as it were upon the stepsof his father's throne, rather than the dogma, too highly spiritualised for their apprehension,of one god in three persons. but probably the chief cause of the arianism of the germaninvaders was the fact that the empire itself was to a great extent arian when they werein friendly relations with it, and were accepting both religion and civilisation at its hands,in the middle years of the fourth century. the most powerful factor in this change, theman who more than all others was responsible for the conversion of the germanic races tochristianity, in its arian form, was the gothic bishop, ulfilas (311-381), whose constructionof an alphabet and translation of the scriptures into the language of his fellow-countrymenhave secured for him imperishable renown among
all who are interested in the history of humanspeech. ulfilas, who has been well termed "the apostle of the goths", seems to haveembraced christianity as a young man when he was dwelling in constantinople as a hostage(thus in some measure anticipating the part which one hundred and thirty years later wasto be played by theodoric), and having been ordained first lector (reader) and afterwards(341) bishop of gothia, he spent the remaining forty years of his life in missionary journeysamong his countrymen in dacia, in collecting those of his converts who fled from the persecutionof their still heathen rulers, and settling them as colonists in må“sia, and, most importantof all, in his great work of the translation of the bible into gothic. of this work, asis well known, some precious fragments still
remain; most precious of all, the glorioussilver manuscript of the gospels (codex argenteus), which is supposed to have been written inthe sixth century, and which, after many wanderings and an eventful history, rests now in a scandinavianland, in the library of the university of upsala, it is well worth while to make a pilgrimageto that friendly and hospitable swedish city, if for no other purpose than to see the letters(traced in silver on parchment of rich purple dye) in which the skilful amanuensis laboriouslytranscribed the sayings of christ rendered by bishop ulfilas into the language of alaric.for that codex argenteus is oldest of all extant monuments of teutonic speech, the firstfruit of that mighty tree which now spreads its branches over half the civilised world.
with the theological bearings of the ariancontroversy we have no present concern; but it is impossible not to notice the unfortunatepolitical results of the difference of creed between the german invaders and the greatmajority of the inhabitants of the empire. the cultivators of the soil and the dwellersin the cities had suffered much from the misgovernment of their rulers during the last two centuriesof imperial sway; they could, to some extent, appreciate the nobler moral qualities of thebarbarian settlers--their manliness, their truthfulness, their higher standard of chastity;nor is it idle to suppose that if there had been perfect harmony of religious faith betweenthe new-comers and the old inhabitants they might soon have settled down into vigorousand well-ordered communities, such as theodoric
and cassiodorus longed to behold, combiningthe teutonic strength with the roman reverence for law. religious discord made it impossibleto realise this ideal the orthodox clergy loathed and dreaded the invaders "infected",as they said, "with the arian pravity". the barbarian kings, unaccustomed to have theirwill opposed by men who never wielded a broadsword, were masterful and high-handed in their demandfor absolute obedience, even when their commands related to the things of god rather than tothe things of cã¦sar; and the arian bishops and priests who stood beside their thrones,and who had sometimes long arrears of vengeance for past insult or oppression to exact, oftenwrought up the monarch's mind to a perfect frenzy of fanatical rage, and goaded him tocruel deeds which made reconciliation between
the warring creeds hopelessly impossible.in africa, the vandal kings set on foot a persecution of their catholic subjects whichrivalled, nay exceeded, the horrors of the persecution under diocletian. churches weredestroyed, bishops banished, and their flocks forbidden to elect their successors: nay,sometimes, in the fierce quest after hidden treasure, eminent ecclesiastics were stretchedon the rack, their mouths were filled with noisome dirt, or cords were twisted roundtheir foreheads or their shins. in gaul, under the visigothic king euric, the persecutionwas less savage, but it was stubborn and severe. here, too, the congregations were forbiddento elect successors to their exiled bishops; the paths to the churches were stopped upwith thorns and briers; cattle grazed on the
grass-grown altar steps, and the rain camethrough the shattered roofs into the dismantled basilicas. thus all round the shores of the mediterraneanthere was strife and bitter heart-burning between the roman provincial and his teutonic"guest", not so much because one was or called himself a roman, while the other called himselfgoth, burgundian, or vandal, but because one was athanasian and the other arian. with thisstrife of creeds theodoric, for the greater part of his reign, refused to concern himself.he remained an arian, as his fathers had been before him, but he protected the catholicchurch in the privileges which she had acquired, and he refused to exert his royal authorityto either threaten or allure men into adopting
his creed. so evenly for many years did hehold the balance between the rival faiths, that it was reported of him that he put todeath a catholic priest who apostatised to arianism in order to attain the royal favour;and though this story does not perhaps rest on sufficient authority, there can be no doubtthat the general testimony of the marvelling catholic subjects of theodoric would havecoincided with that already quoted from the bishop of ravenna that "he attempted nothingagainst the catholic faith". still, though determined not to govern inthe interests of a sect, it was impossible that theodoric's political relations shouldnot be, to a certain extent, modified by his religious affinities. let us glance at theposition of the chief states with which a
ruler of italy at the close of the fifth centurynecessarily came in contact. first of all we have the empire, practicallyconfined at this time to "the balkan peninsula" south of the danube, asia minor, syria, andegypt, and presided over by the elderly, politic, but unpopular anastasius. this state is catholic,though, as we shall hereafter see, not in hearty alliance with the church of rome. westward from the empire, along the southernshore of the mediterranean, stretches the great kingdom of the vandals, with carthagefor its capital. they have a powerful navy, but their kings, gunthamund (484-496) andthrasamund (496-523), do not seem to be disposed to renew the buccaneering expeditions of theirgrandfather, the great vandal gaiseric. they
are decided arians, and keep up a stern, steadypressure on their catholic subjects, who are spared, however, the ruthless brutalitiespractised upon them by the earlier vandal kings. the relations of the vandals with theostrogothic kingdom seem to have been of a friendly character during almost the wholereign of theodoric. thrasamund, the fourth king who reigned at carthage, married amalafrida,theodoric's sister, who brought with her, as dowry, possession of the strong fortressof lilybã¦um (marsala), in the west of sicily, and who was accompanied to her new home bya brilliant train of one thousand gothic nobles with five thousand mounted retainers. in the north and west of spain dwell the nationof the suevi, teutonic and arian, but practically
out of the sphere of european politics, andwho, half a century after the death of theodoric, will be absorbed by their visigothic neighbours. this latter state, the kingdom of the visigoths,is apparently, at the end of the fifth century, by far the most powerful of the new barbarianmonarchies. all spain, except its north-western corner, and something like half of gaul--namely,that region which is contained between the pyrenees and the loire, owns the sway of theyoung king, whose capital city is toulouse, and who, though a stranger in blood, - bearsthe name of the great visigoth who first battered a breach in the walls of rome, the mightyalaric. this alaric ii. (485-507), the son of euric, who had been the most powerful sovereignof his dynasty, inherited neither his father's
force of character (485-507) nor the bitternessof his arianism. the persecution of the catholics was suspended, or ceased altogether, and wemay picture to ourselves the congregations again wending their way by unblockaded pathsto the house of prayer, the churches once more roofed in and again made gorgeous bythe stately ceremonial of the catholic rite. in other ways, too, alaric showed himselfanxious to conciliate the favour of his roman subjects. he ordered an abstract of the imperialcode to be prepared, and this abstract, under the name of the breviarium alaricianum isto this day one of our most valuable sources of information as to roman law. he is alsosaid to have directed the construction of the canal, which still bears his name (canald'alaric), and which, connecting the adour
with the aisne, assists the irrigation ofthe meadows of gascony. but all these attempts to close the feud between the king and hisorthodox subjects were vain. when the day of trial came, it was seen, as it had longbeen suspected, that the sympathies and the powerful influence of the bishops and clergywere thrown entirely on the side of the catholic invader. between the visigothic and ostrogothic courtsthere was firm friendship and alliance, the remembrance of their common origin and ofmany perils and hardships shared together on the shores of the euxine and in the passesof the balkans being fortified by the knowledge of the dangers to which their common professionof arianism exposed them amidst the catholic
population of the empire. the alliance, whichhad served theodoric in good stead when the visigoths helped him in his struggle withodovacar, was yet further strengthened by kinship, the young king of toulouse havingreceived in marriage a princess from ravenna, whose name is variously given as arevagnior ostrogotho. a matrimonial alliance also connected theodoricwith the king of the burgundians. these invaders, who were destined so strangely to disappearout of history themselves, while giving their name to such wide and rich regions of mediã¦valeurope, occupied at this time the valleys of the saone and the rhone, as well as thecountry which we now call switzerland. their king, gundobad, a man somewhat older thantheodoric, had once interfered zealously in
the politics of italy, making and unmakingemperors and striking for odovacar against his ostrogothic rival. now, however, his wholeenergies were directed to extending his dominions in gaul, and to securing his somewhat precariousthrone from the machinations of the catholic bishops, his subjects. for he, too, was byprofession an arian, though of a tolerant type, and though he sometimes seemed on thepoint of crossing the abyss and declaring himself a convert to the nicene faith. theudegotho,sister of arevagni, was given by her father, theodoric in marriage to sigismund, the sonand heir of gundobad. the event which intensified the fears of allthese arian kings, and which left to each one little more than the hope that he mightbe the last to be devoured, was the conversion
to catholicism of clovis, the heathen kingof the franks, that fortunate barbarian who, by a well-timed baptism, won for his tribeof rude warriors the possession of the fairest land in europe and the glory of giving birthto one of the foremost nations in the world. as we are here come to one of the common-placesof history, i need but very briefly remind the reader of the chief stages in the upwardcourse of the young frankish king. born in 466, he succeeded his father, childeric, asone of the kings of the salian franks in 481. the lands of the salians occupied but theextreme northern corner of modern france, and a portion of flanders, and even here cloviswas but one of many kinglets allied by blood but frequently engaged in petty and ingloriouswars one with another.
for five years the young salian chieftainlived in peace with his neighbours. in the twentieth year of his age (486) he sprangwith one bound into fame and dominion by attacking and overcoming the roman syagrius, who withill-defined prerogatives, and bearing the title not of emperor or of prefect, but ofking, had succeeded amidst the wreck of the western empire in preserving some of the fairestdistricts of the north of gaul from barbarian domination. with the help of some of his brotherchiefs, clovis overthrew this "king of soissons". syagrius took refuge at the court of toulouse,and the frankish king now felt himself strong enough to send to the young alaric, who hadascended the throne only a year before, a peremptory message, insisting, under the penaltyof a declaration of war, on the surrender
of the roman fugitive. the visigoth was mean-spiritedenough to purchase peace by delivering up his guest, bound in fetters, to the ambassadorsof clovis, who shortly after ordered him to be privily done to death. from that time,we may well believe, clovis felt confident that he should one day vanquish alaric. about seven years after this event (493) camehis memorable marriage with clotilda, a burgundian princess, who, unlike her arian uncle, gundobad,was enthusiastically devoted to the catholic faith, and who ceased not by private conversationsand by inducing him to listen to the sermons of the eloquent bishop remigius, to endeavourto win her husband from the religion of his heathen forefathers to the creed of rome andof the empire. clovis, however, for some years
wavered. sprung himself, according to thetraditions of his people, from the sea-god meroveus, he was not in haste to renouncethis fabulous glory, nor to acknowledge as lord, one who had been reared in a carpenter'sshop at nazareth. he allowed clotilda to have her eldest son baptised, but when the childsoon after died, he took that as a sign of the power and vengeance of the old gods. asecond son was born, was baptised, fell sick. had that child died, clovis would probablyhave remained an obstinate heathen, but the little one recovered, given back, as was believed,to the earnest prayers of his mother. it was perhaps during these years of indecisionas to his future religious profession, that clovis consented to a matrimonial alliancebetween his house and that of the arian theodoric.
the great ostrogoth married, probably aboutthe year 495, the sister of clovis, augofleda, who, as we may reasonably conjecture, renouncedthe worship of the gods of her people, and was baptised by an arian bishop on becoming"queen of the goths and romans". unfortunately the meagre annals of the time give us no hintof the character or history of the princess who was thus transferred from the fens offlanders to the marshes of ravenna. every indication shows that she came from a farlower level of civilisation than that which her husband's people occupied. did she soonlearn to conform herself to the stately ceremonial which ravenna borrowed from constantinople?did she too speak of civilitas and the necessity of obeying the roman laws, and did she sharethe "glorious colloquies" which her husband
held with the exuberant cassiodorus? whenwar came between the ostrogoth and the frank, did she openly show her sympathy with herbrother clovis, or did she "forget her people and her father's house" and cleave with allher soul to the fortunes of theodoric? as to all these interesting questions the "variousletters", with all their diffuseness, give us no more information than the most jejuneof the annalists. the only fact upon which we might found a conjecture is the love ofliterature and of roman civilisation displayed by her daughter, amalasuentha, which inclinesus to guess that the mother may have thrown off her frankish wildness when she came intothe softening atmosphere of italy. we return to the event so memorable in thehistory of the world, clovis' conversion to
christianity. in the year 486 he went forthto fight his barbarian neighbours in the south-east, the alamanni, the battle was a stubborn anda bloody one, as well it might be when two such thunder-clouds met, the savage frankand the savage alaman. already the frankish host seemed wavering, when clovis, liftinghis eyes to heaven and shedding tears in the agony of his soul, said: "o jesus christ!whom clotilda declares to be the son of the living god, who art said to give help to theweary, and victory to them that trust in thee, i humbly pray for thy glorious aid, and promisethat if thou wilt indulge me with the victory over these enemies, i will believe in theeand be baptised in thy name. for i have called on my own gods and have found that they areof no power and do not help those who call
upon them". scarcely had he spoken the wordswhen the tide of battle turned. the franks recovered from their panic, the alamanni turnedto flight. their king was slain, and his people submitted to clovis, who, returning, toldhis queen how he had called upon her god in the day of battle and been delivered. then followed, after a short consultationwith the leading men of his kingdom, which made the change of faith in some degree anational act, the celebrated scene in the cathedral of rheims, where the king, havingconfessed his faith in the holy trinity, was baptised in the name of the father and theson and the holy ghost, the poetical bishop uttering the well-known words:"bow down thyhead in lowliness, o sicambrian; adore what
thou hast burned and burn what thou hast adored".the streets of the city were hung with bright banners, white curtains adorned the churches,and clouds of sweet incense filled all the great basilica in which "the new constantine"stooped to the baptismal water. he entered the cathedral a mere "sicambrian" chieftain,the descendant of the sea-god: he emerged from it amid the acclamations of the joyousprovincials, "the eldest son of the church". the result of this ceremony was to changethe political relations of every state in gaul. though the franks were among the roughestand most uncivilised of the tribes that had poured westwards across the rhine, as catholicsthey were now sure of a welcome from the catholic clergy of every city, and where the clergyled, the "roman" provincials, or in other
words the latin-speaking laity, generallyfollowed. immediately after his baptism clovis received a letter of enthusiastic welcomeinto the true fold, written by avitus, bishop of vienne, the most eminent ecclesiastic ofthe burgundian kingdom. "i regret", says avitus, "that i could not be present in the fleshat that most glorious solemnity. but as your most sublime humility had sent me a messengerto inform me of your intention, when night fell i retired to rest already secure of yourconversion. how often my friends and i went over the scene in our imaginations! we sawthe band of holy prelates vying with one another in the ambition of lowly service, each onewishing to comfort the royal limbs with the water of life. we saw that head, so terribleto the nations, bowed low before the servants
of god; the hair which had grown long underthe helmet now crowned with the diadem of the holy anointing; the coat of mail laidaside and the white limbs wrapped in linen robes as white and spotless as themselves. "one thing only have i to ask of you, thatyou will spread the light which you have yourself received to the nations around you. scatterthe seeds of faith from out of the good treasure of your heart, and be not ashamed, by embassiesdirected to this very end, to strengthen in other states the cause of that god who hasso greatly exalted your fortunes. shine on, for ever, upon those who are present, by lustreof your diadem, upon those who are absent, by the glory of your name. we are touchedby your happiness; as often as you fight in
those (heretical) lands, we conquer". the use of language like this, showing suchearnest devotion to the cause of clovis in the subject of a rival monarch, well illustratesthe tendency of the frankish king's conversion to loosen the bonds of loyalty in the neighbouringstates, and to facilitate the spread of his dominion over the whole of gaul. in fact,the frankish kingdom, having become catholic, was like the magnetic mountain of orientalfable, which drew to itself all the iron nails of the ships which approached it, and so causedthem to sink in hopeless dissolution. seeing this obvious result of the conversion of thefrank, some historians, especially in the last century,were disposed to look upon thatconversion as a mere hypocritical pretence.
later critics have shown that this is notan accurate account of the matter. doubtless the motives which induced clovis to acceptbaptism and to profess faith in the crucified one were of the meanest, poorest, and mostunspiritual kind. few men have ever been further from that which christ called "the kingdomof heaven" than this grasping and brutal frankish chief, to whom robbery, falsehood, murderwere, after his baptism, as much as before it (perhaps even more than before it), theordinary steps in the ladder of his elevation. but the rough barbaric soul had in its dimfashion a faith that the god of the christians was the mightiest god, and that it would gowell with those who submitted to him. in his rude style he made imaginary bargains withthe most high: "so much reverence to 'clotilda's
god,' so many offerings at the shrine of st.martin, so much land to the church of st. genovefa, on condition that i shall beat downmy enemies before me and extend my dominions from the seine to the pyrenees". this is thekind of calculation which the missionaries in our own day are only too well accustomedto hear from the lips of barbarous potentates like those of uganda and fiji. a conversionthus effected brings no honour to any church, and the utter selfishness and even profanityof the transaction disgusts the devout souls of every communion. still the conversion ofclovis was not in its essence and origin a hypocritical scheme for obtaining the supportof the catholic clergy in gaul, how clearly so ever the new convert may have soon perceivedthat from that support he would "suck no small
advantage". the first of his arian neighbours whom clovisstruck at was the burgundian, gundobad. in the year 500 he beseiged dijon with a largearmy. gundobad called on his brother godegisel, who reigned at geneva, for help, but thatbrother was secretly in league with clovis, and at a critical moment joined the invaders,who were for a time completely successful. gundobad was driven into exile and godegiselaccepting the position of a tributary ally of his powerful frankish friend, ruled overthe whole burgundian kingdom. his rule however seems not to have been heartily accepted bythe burgundian people. the exiled gundobad returned with a few followers, who daily increasedin number; he found himself strong enough
to besiege godegisel in vienne; he at lengthentered the city through the blow-hole of an aqueduct, slew his brother with his ownhand, and put his chief adherents to death "with exquisite torments". the frankish troopswho garrisoned vienne were taken prisoners, but honourably treated and sent to toulouseto be guarded by alaric the visigoth, who had probably assisted the enterprise of gundobad. the inactivity of clovis during this counter-revolutionin burgundy is not easily explained. either there was some great explosion of burgundiannational feeling against the franks, which for the time made further interference dangerous,or gundobad, having added his brother's dominions to his own, was now too strong for clovisto meddle with, or, which seems on the whole
the most probable supposition, gundobad himself,secretly inclining towards the catholic cause, had made peace with clovis through the mediationof the clergy, and came back to vienne to rule thenceforward as a dependent ally, thoughnot an avowed tributary, of clovis and the franks. we shall soon have occasion to observethat in the crisis of its fortunes the confederacy of arian states could not count on the co-operationof gundobad. to form such a confederacy and to league togetherall the older arian monarchies against this one aspiring catholic state, which threatenedto absorb them all, was now the main purpose of theodoric. he seems, however, to have remainedmeanwhile on terms of courtesy and apparent harmony with his powerful brother-in-law.
he congratulated him on a second victoriouscampaign against the alamanni (about 503 or 504), and he took some trouble to comply witha request, which clovis had made to him, to find out a skilful harper who might be sentto his court. the letter which relates to this transaction is a curious specimen ofcassiodorus' style. it is addressed to the young philosopher boã«thius, a man whose variedaccomplishments adorned the middle period of the reign of theodoric, and whose tragicaldeath was to bring sadness over its close. to this man, whose knowledge of the musicalart was pre-eminent in his generation, cassiodorus addresses one of the longest letters in hiscollection (it would occupy about six pages of an ordinary octavo), only one or two sentencesof which relate to the business in hand. the
letter begins: "since the king of the franks,attracted by the fame of our banquets, has with earnest prayers besought us to send hima harper (citharå“dus), our only hope of executing his commission lies in you, whom we know tobe accomplished in musical learning. for it will be easy for you to choose a well-skilledman, having yourself been able to attain to that high and abstruse study". then followa string of reflections on the soothing power of music, a description of the five "modes"(dorian, phrygian, aeolian, ionian, and lydian) and of the diapason; instances of the powerof music drawn from the scriptures and from heathen mythology, a discussion on the harmonyof the spheres, and a doubt whether the enjoyment of this "astral music" be rightly placed amongthe delights of heaven. at length the marvellous
state-paper draws to a close, "but since wehave made this pleasing digression (because it is always agreeable to talk about learningwith learned men) let your wisdom choose out for us the best harper of the day, for thepurpose that we have mentioned. herein will you accomplish a task somewhat like that oforpheus, when he with sweet sounds tamed the fierce hearts of savage creatures. the thankswhich we owe you will be expressed by liberal compensation, for you obey our rule, and tothe utmost of your power render it illustrious by your attainments". evidently the court of theodoric was regardedas a centre of light and civilisation by his teutonic neighbours, the lords of the newkingdoms to the north of him. king gundobad
desired to become the possessor of a clepsydraor water-clock, such as had long been used in athens and rome, to regulate the time allottedto the orators in public debates. he also wished to obtain an accurately graduated sun-dial.for both he made request to theodoric, and again the universal genius boã«thius was appliedto, cassiodorus writes him, in his master's name, a letter which gives us some interestinginformation as to the past career of boã«thius, and then proceeds to give a specificationof the required machines, in language so magnificent as to be, at any rate to modern mechanicians,hopelessly unintelligible. then a shorter letter, to accompany the clock and dial, iswritten to king gundobad. this letter, which is written in a slightly condescending tone,says that the tie of affinity between the
two kings makes it right that gundobad shouldreceive benefits from theodoric: "let burgundy under your sway learn to examine the mostcurious objects, and to praise the inventions of the ancients. through you she is layingaside her old barbarian tastes, and while she admires the prudence of her king she rightlydesires the works of wise men of old. let her mark out the different intervals of theday by her actions: let her in the most fitting manner assign the occupation of each hour.this is to lead the true human life, as distinguished from that of the brutes, who know the flightof time only by the cravings of their appetites". a time, however, was approaching when thispleasant interchange of courtesies between the three sovereigns, ostrogothic, frankish,and burgundian, was to be succeeded by the
din of wan alaric the visigoth, alarmed atthe victorious progress of the frankish king, sent a message to this effect: "if my brotheris willing, let him consider my proposal that, by the favour of god, we should have an interviewwith one another". clovis accepted the offer, and the two kings met on an island in theloire near amboise. but either no alliance could be formed, owing to religious differences,or the treaty so made was too weak for the strain which it had to bear, and it becamemanifest before long that war would soon break out between "francia" and "gothia". theodoric exerted himself strenuously to preventthe impending struggle, which, as he too surely foresaw, would bring only disaster to hisvisigothic allies. he caused his eloquent
secretary to write letters to clovis, to alaric,to gundobad, to the neighbours of the franks on their eastern border, the kings of theheruli, the warni, and the thuringians. to clovis he dilated on the horrors which warbrings upon the inhabitants of the warring lands, who have a right to expect that thekinship of their lords will keep them at peace. a few paltry words were no sufficient causeof war between two such monarchs, and it was the act of a passionate and hot-headed manto be mobilising his troops while he was sending his first embassy. to alaric he sent an earnestwarning against engaging in war with clovis: "you are surrounded by an innumerable multitudeof subjects, and you are proud of the remembrance of the defeat of attila, but war is a terriblydangerous game, and you know not how the long
peace may have softened the warlike fibreof your people". he besought gundobad to join with him in preserving peace between the combatants,to each of whom he had offered his arbitration. "it behoves us old, men to moderate the wrathof the royal youths, who should reverence our age, though they are still in the flowerof their hot youth". the kings of the barbarians were reminded of the friendship which alaric'sfather, euric, had shown them in old days, and invited to join in a "league of peace",in order to check the lawless aggressions of clovis, which threatened danger to all. the diplomatic action of theodoric was powerlessto avert the war; possibly even it may have stimulated clovis to strike rapidly beforea hostile coalition could be formed against
him. at an assembly of his nation (perhaps the"camp of march") in the early part of 507, he impetuously declared: "i take it grievouslyamiss that these arians should hold so large a part of gaul. let us go and overcome themwith god's help, and bring the land into subjection to us". the saying pleased the whole multitude,and the collected army inarched southward to the loire. on their way they passed throughthe territory owned by the monastery of st. martin of tours, the greatest saint of gaul.here the king commanded them to abstain religiously from all depredations, taking only grass fortheir horses, and water from the streams. one of the soldiers, finding a quantity ofhay in the possession of a peasant, took it
from him, arguing that hay was grass, andso came within the permitted exception. he was, however, at once cut down with a sword,the king exclaiming. "what hope shall we have of victory if we offend the blessed martin?"having first prayed for a sign, clovis sent his messengers with gifts to the great basilicaof tours, and behold! when these messengers set foot in the sacred building, the choristerswere singing an antiphon, taken from the 18th psalm: "thou hast girded me with strengthunto the battle, thou hast subdued under me those that rose up against me". meanwhile, alaric, taken at unawares, shortof men and short of money, was endeavouring to remedy the latter deficiency by a depreciationof the currency. to swell his slender battalions
he evidently looked to his father-in-law,theodoric, whose peace-making letter had ended with these words: "we look upon your enemyas the common enemy of all. whoever strives against you will rightly have to deal withme, as a foe". yet notwithstanding this assurance, no ostrogothic troops came at this time tothe help of the visigoths. in the great dearth of historical material, our account of thesetransactions has to be made up from scattered and fragmentary notices, which do not enableus to explain this strange inaction of so true-hearted an ally. it is not imputed tohim as a fault by any contemporary authority, and it seems reasonable to suppose that notthe will, but the power, to help his menaced son-in-law was wanting. one alarming changein the situation had revealed itself since
theodoric ordered his secretary to write theletters recommending an anti-frankish confederacy of kings. gundobad the burgundian was nowthe declared ally of clovis, and promised himself a share of the spoil. so powerfulan enemy on the flank, threatening the communications of the two gothic states, may very probablyhave been the reason why no timely succour was sent from ravenna to toulouse. clovis and his frankish host, hungering forthe spoil, pressed forwards, and succeeded, apparently without opposition, in crossingthe broad river loire. alaric had taken up a strong position at the campus vogladensis(vouillã©: dep. vienne), about ten miles from poitiers. here he wished to remain on thedefensive till the expected succours from
theodoric could arrive, but his soldiers,confident in their power to beat the franks unassisted, began to revile their king's over-cautionand his father-in-law's delay, and forced alaric to fight. the goths began hurling theirmissile weapons, but the daring franks rushed in upon them and commenced a hand-to-handencounter, in which they were completely victorious. the goths turned to flee, and clovis, ridingup to where alaric was fighting, slew him with his own hand. he himself had immediatelyafterwards a narrow escape from two of the enemy, who, coming suddenly upon him, thrusttheir long spears at him, one on each side. the strength of his coat of mail, however,and the speed of his horse saved him from a disaster which might possibly even thenhave turned the tide of victory.
the result of this battle was the completeoverthrow of the visigothic kingdom of toulouse. in a certain sense it survived, and for twocenturies played a great part in europe as the spanish kingdom of toledo, but, as competitorsfor dominion in gaul, the visigoths henceforward disappear from history. there seems to havebeen a certain want of toughness in the visigothic fibre, a tendency to rashness combined witha tendency to panic, which made it possible for their enemies to achieve a complete triumphover them in a single battle. (376) athanaric staked his all on one battlewith the huns, and lost, by the rivers of bessarabia. (507) alaric ii., as we have seen, stakedhis all on one battle with the franks, and
lost, on the campus vogladensis. (701) two centuries later roderic staked hisall upon one battle with the moors, and lost, at xeres de la frontera. all through the year 507 the allied forcesof franks and burgundians seem to have poured over the south-west and south of gaul, annexingangoulã¨me, saintonge, auvergne, and gascony to the dominions of clovis, and provence tothe dominions of gundobad. only the strong city of aries, and perhaps the fortress ofcarcassonne (that most interesting relic of the early middle ages, which still shows thehandiwork of visigothic kings in its walls), still held out for the son of alaric.
in 508 the long delayed forces of theodoricappeared upon the scene under his brave general, tulum, and dealt some severe blows at theallied frankish and burgundian armies. in 509 another army, under duke mammo, crossedthe cottian alps near briancon, laid waste part of dauphinã©, and probably compelleda large detachment of the burgundian army to return for the defence of their homes.and lastly, in 510, theodoric's general, ibbas, inflicted a crushing defeat on the alliedarmies, leaving, it is said, thirty thousand franks dead upon the field. the number isprobably much exaggerated (as these historical bulletins are apt to be), but there can beno doubt that a great and important victory was won by the troops of theodoric. the immediateresult of this victory was the raising of
the siege of aries, whose valiant defendershad held out against storm and blockade, famine and treachery within, franks and burgundianswithout, for the space of two years and a half. ultimately, and perhaps before manymonths had passed, the victory of ibbas led to a cessation of hostilities, if not to aformal treaty of peace, between the three powers which disputed the possession of gaul.the terms practically arranged were these. clovis remained in possession of far the largestpart of alaric's dominions, aquitaine nearly up to the roots of the pyrenees, and so muchof languedoc (including toulouse, the late capital of the visigoths) as lay west of themountains of the cevennes. theodoric obtained the rest of languedoc and provence, the firstprovince being deemed to be a part of the
visigothic, the second of the ostrogothic,dominions, gundobad obtained nothing, but lost some towns on his southern frontier--afitting reward for his tortuous and shifty policy. in the meantime something like civil war hadbeen waged on the other side of the pyrenees for the spanish portion of the visigothicinheritance. alaric, slain on the field of vouillã©, had left two sons, one amalaric,his legitimate heir and the grandson of theodoric, but still a child, the other a young man,but of illegitimate birth, named gesalic. this latter was, on the death of his father,proclaimed king by some fraction of the visigothic people. had gesalic shown courage and skillin winning back the lost inheritance of his
father, theodoric, whose own descent was notlegitimate according to strict church law, would not, perhaps, have interfered with hisclaim to the succession. but the young man was as weak and cowardly as his birth wasbase, and the strenuous efforts of theodoric, seconded probably by many of the visigothswho had first acclaimed him as king, were directed to getting rid of this futile pretender.gesalic, defeated by gundobad at narbonne (which, for a time, became the possessionof the burgundians), fled over the pyrenees to barcelona, and from thence across the seato carthage. thrasamund, king of the vandals, aided him with money and promised him support,being probably deceived by the glozing tongue of gesalic, and looking upon him simply asa brave young visigoth battling for his rightful
inheritance with the franks. a correspondencefollowed between ravenna and carthage, in which theodoric bitterly complained of theprotection given by his brother-in-law to an intriguer and a rebel; and, on the receiptof theodoric's letter, thrasamund at once disclaimed all further intention of helpingthe pretender and sent rich presents to his offended kinsman, which theodoric graciouslyreturned. gesalic again appeared in barcelona, still doubtless wearing the insignia of kingship,but was defeated by the same duke ibbas who had raised the siege of aries, and, fleeinginto gaul, probably in order to claim the protection of the enemy of his house, kinggundobad, he was overtaken by the soldiers of theodoric near the river durance, and wasput to death by his captors. thus there remained
but one undisputed heir to what was left ofthe great visigothic kingdom, the little child amalaric, theodoric's grandson. he was broughtup in spain, but, apparently with the full consent of the visigothic people, his grandsireassumed the reins of government, ruling in his own name but with a tacit understandingthat amalaric and no other should succeed (510-525) there was thus for fifteen yearsa combination of states which europe has not witnessed before or since, though charlesv. and some of his descendants were not far from achieving it. all of italy and all ofspain (except the north-west corner, which was held by the suevi) obeyed the rule oftheodoric, and the fair regions of provence and languedoc, acknowledging the same master,were the ligament that united them. of the
character of the government of theodoric inspain, history tells us scarcely anything; but there is reason to think that it was aswise and beneficent as his government of italy, its chief fault being probably the undue shareof power which was grasped by the ostrogothic minister theudis, whom theodoric had appointedas guardian to his grandson, and who, having married a wealthy spanish lady, assumed asemi-royal state, and became at last so mighty that theodoric himself did not dare to insistupon the recall which he had veiled under the courteous semblance of an invitation tohis palace at ravenna. thus then the policy of theodoric towardshis kinsmen and co-religionists in gaul had failed, but it had not been a hopeless failure.he had missed, probably through no fault of
his own, through the rashness of alaric andthe treachery of gundobad, the right moment for saving the kingdom of toulouse from shipwreck,but he had vindicated in adversity the honour of the gothic name, and he had succeeded insaving a considerable part of the cargo which the stately vessel had carried. chapter xi.anastasius. in order to complete our survey of the foreignpolicy of the great ostrogoth, we must now consider the relations which existed betweenhim and the majestic personage who, though he had probably never set foot in italy, wasyet always known in the common speech of men as "the roman emperor". it has been alreadysaid that zeno, the sovereign who bore this
title when theodoric started for italy, diedbefore his final victory, and that it was his successor, anastasius, with whom the tediousnegotiations were conducted which ended (497) in a recognition, perhaps a somewhat grudgingrecognition, by the emperor of the right of the ostrogothic king to rule in italy. anastasius, who was theodoric's contemporaryduring twenty-five years of his reign, was already past sixty when the widowed empressariadne chose him for her husband and her emperor, and he had attained the age of eighty-eightwhen his harassed life came to a close. a man of tall stature and noble presence, awise administrator of the finances of the empire, and therefore one who both lightenedtaxation and accumulated treasure, a sovereign
who chose his servants well and brought hisonly considerable war, that with persia, to a successful issue, anastasius would seemto be an emperor of whom both his own subjects and posterity should speak favourably. unfortunately,however, for his fame he became entangled in that most wearisome of theological debates,which is known as the monophysite controversy. in this controversy he took an unpopular side;he became embroiled with the roman pontiff, and estranged from his own patriarch of constantinople.opposition and the weariness of age soured a naturally sweet temper, and he was guiltyof some harsh proceedings towards his ecclesiastical opponents. even worse than his harshness (whichdid not, even on the representations of his enemies, amount to cruelty) was a certainwant of absolute truthfulness, which made
it difficult for a beaten foe to trust hispromises of forgiveness, and thus caused the fire of civil discord, once kindled, to smoulderon almost interminably. the religious party to which he belonged had probably the majorityof the aristocracy of constantinople on its side, but the mob and the monks were generallyagainst anastasius, and some scenes very humiliating to the imperial dignity were the consequenceof this antagonism. (511) once, when he had resolved on the depositionof the orthodox patriarch of constantinople, macedonius, so great a tempest of popularand theological fury raged through the city, that he ordered the great gates of his palaceto be barred and the ships to be made ready at what is now called seraglio point, intendingto seek safety in flight. a humiliating reconciliation
with the patriarch, the order for whose banishmenthe rescinded, saved him from this necessity. the citizens and the soldiers poured throughthe streets shouting triumphantly: "our father is yet with us!" and the storm for the timeabated. but the emperor had only appeared to yield, and some months later he stealthilybut successfully carried into effect his design for the banishment of macedonius. again, thenext year, a religious faction-fight disgraced the capital of the empire. (511) the addition of the words "who wastcrucified for us" to the chorus of the te deum, "holy, holy, holy, lord god almighty",goaded the orthodox but fanatical mob to madness. for three days such scenes as london saw duringlord george gordon's "no popery" riots were
enacted in the streets of constantinople.the palaces of the heterodox ministers were burned, their deaths were eagerly demanded,the head of a monk, who was supposed to be responsible for the heretical addition tothe hymn, was carried round the city on a pole, while the murderers shouted: "beholdthe head of an enemy to the trinity!" then the statues of the emperor were thrown down,an act of insurrection which corresponded to the building of barricades in the revolutionsof paris, and loud voices began to call for the proclamation of a popular general as augustus.anastasius this time dreamed not of flight, but took his seat in the podium at the hippodrome,the great place of public meeting for the citizens of constantinople. thither, too,streamed the excited mob, fresh from their
work of murder and pillage, shouting withhoarse voices the line of the te deum in its orthodox form. a suppliant, without his diadem,without his purple robe, the white-haired anastasius, eighty-two years of age, sat meeklyon his throne, and bade the criers declare that he was ready to lay down the burden ofthe empire if the citizens would decide who should assume it in his stead. the humiliationwas accepted, the clamorous mob were not really of one mind as to the election of a successor,and anastasius was permitted still to reign and to reassume the diadem, which has notoften encircled a wearier or more uneasy head. such an emperor as this, at war with a largepart of his subjects, and suspected of heresy by the great body of the catholic clergy,was a much less formidable opponent for theodoric
than the young and warlike clovis, with hisrude energy, and his unquestioning if somewhat truculent orthodoxy. moreover, at this time,independently of these special causes of strife, there was a chronic schism between the seeof rome and the see of constantinople (precursor of that great schism which, three centurieslater, finally divided the eastern and western churches), and this schism, though it didnot as yet lead to the actual excommunication of anastasius, caused him to be looked uponwith coldness and suspicion by the successive popes of rome, and made the rule of theodoric,avowed arian as he was, but anxious to hold the balance evenly between rival churches,far more acceptable at the lateran than that of the schismatic partisan anastasius.
for some years after the embassy of festus(497) and the consequent recognition of theodoric by the emperor, there appears to have beenpeace, if no great cordiality, between the courts of ravenna and constantinople. buta war in which theodoric found himself engaged with the gepid㦠(504), taking him back asit did into his old unwelcome nearness to the danube, led to the actual outbreak ofhostilities between the two states, hostilities, however, which were but of short duration. the great city of sirmium on the save, theruins of which may still be seen about eighty miles west of belgrade, had once belongedto the western empire and had been rightly looked upon as one of the bulwarks of italy.to anyone who studies the configuration of
the great alpine chain, which parts off theitalian peninsula from the rest of europe, it will be manifest that it is in the north-eastthat that mountain barrier is the weakest. the maritime, pennine, and cottian alps, whichsoar above the plains of piedmont and western lombardy, afford scarcely any passes belowthe snow-line practicable for an invading army. great generals, like hannibal and napoleon,have indeed crossed them, but the pride which they have taken in the achievement is thebest proof of its difficulty. modern engineering science has carried its zig-zag roads up totheir high crests, has thrown its bridges across their ravines, has defended the travellerby its massive galleries from their avalanches, and in these later days has even bored itstunnels for miles through the heart of the
mountains; but all these are works done obviouslyin defiance of nature, and if europe relapsed into a state of barbarism, the eternal snowand the eternal silence would soon reassert their supremacy over the frail handiwork ofman. quite different from this is the aspect of the mountains on the north-eastern borderof italy. the countries which we now call venetia and istria are parted from their northernneighbours by ranges (chiefly that known as the julian alps) which are indeed of boldand striking outline, but which are not what we generally understand by "alpine" in theircharacter, and which often do not rise to a greater elevation than four thousand feet.therefore it was from this quarter of the horizon, from the pannonian (or in modernlanguage, austrian) countries bordering on
the middle danube, that all the greatest invadersin the fifth and sixth centuries, alaric, attila, alboin, bore down upon italy. andfor this reason it was truly said by an orator who was recounting the praises of theodoricin connection with this war: "the city of the sirmians was of old the frontier of italy,upon which emperors and senators kept watch, lest from thence the stored up fury of theneighbouring nations should pour over the roman commonwealth". this city of sirmium, however, and the surroundingterritory had now been for many years divorced from italy. in theodoric's boyhood it is possiblethat his own barbarian countrymen, occupying as they did the province of pannonia, lordedit in the streets of sirmium, which was properly
a pannonian city. since the ostrogoths evacuatedthe province (473), the gepidã¦, as we have seen, had entered it, and it was a king ofthe gepidã¦, traustila, who sought to bar theodoric's march into italy, and who sustainedat the hands of the ostrogothic king the crushing defeat by the hiulca palus (488). traustila'sson, trasaric, had asked for theodoric's help against a rival claimant to the throne, andhad, perhaps, promised to hand over possession of sirmium in return for that assistance.theodoric, who, as king of "the hesperian realm", felt that it was a point of honourto recover possession of "the frontier city of italy", gave the desired help, but failedto receive the promised recompense. when trasaric's breach of faith was manifest, theodoric sentan army (504) composed of the flower of the
gothic youth, commanded by a general namedpitzias, into the valley of the save. the gepidaã¦, though reinforced by some of thebulgarians (who about thirty years before this time had made their first appearancein the country which now bears their name), were completely defeated by pitzias. trasaric'smother, the widow of theodoric's old enemy, traustila, fell into the hands of the invaders;trasaric was expelled from that corner of pannonia, and sirmium, still apparently agreat and even opulent city, notwithstanding the ravages of the barbarians, submitted,probably with joy, to the rule of theodoric, under which she felt herself once more unitedto the roman commonwealth. we have still (in the "various letters" ofcassiodorus) two letters relating to this
annexation of sirmium. in the first, addressedto count colossã¦us, that "illustrious" official is informed that he is appointed to the governorshipof pannonia sirmiensis, a former habitation of the goths. this province is now to extenda welcome to her old roman lords, even as she gladly obeyed her ostrogothic rulers.surrounded by the wild anarchy of the barbarous nations, the new governor is to exhibit thejustice of the goths, "a nation so happily situated in the midst of praise, that theycould accept the wisdom of the romans and yet hold fast the valour of the barbarians".he is to shield the poor from oppression, and his highest merit will be to establishin the hearts of the inhabitants of the land the love of peace and order.
to the barbarians and romans settled in pannoniathe secretary of theodoric writes, informing them that he has appointed as their governora man mighty in name (colossã¦us) and mighty in deeds. they must refrain from acts of violenceand from redressing their supposed wrongs by main force. having got an upright judge,they must use him as the arbiter of their differences. what is the use to man of histongue, if his armed hand is to settle his cause, or how can peace be maintained if mentake to fighting in a civilised state? they are therefore to imitate the example of "ourgoths", who do not shrink from battles abroad, but who have learned to exhibit peaceablemoderation at home. the recovery of sirmium from the gepidã¦,though doubtless the subject of congratulation
in italy, was viewed with much displeasureat constantinople. whether the part of pannonia in which it was included belonged in strictnessto the eastern or western empire, is a question that has been a good deal discussed and uponwhich we have perhaps not sufficient materials for coming to a conclusion. the boundary linebetween east and west had undoubtedly fluctuated a good deal in the fourth and fifth centuries,and the fact that there were not, as viewed by a roman statesman, two empires at all,but only one great world-empire, which for the sake of convenience was administered bytwo emperors, one dwelling at ravenna or milan and the other at constantinople, was probablythe reason why that boundary was not defined as strictly as it would have been betweentwo independent kingdoms. moreover, through
the greater part of the fifth century, whenhuns and ostrogoths, rugians and gepid㦠were roaming over these countries of the middledanube, any claim of either the eastern or western emperor to rule in these lands musthave been so purely theoretical that it probably seemed hardly worth while to spend time indefining it. but now that the actual ruler of italy, and that ruler a strong and capablebarbarian like theodoric, was holding the great city of sirmium, and was sending hisgovernors to civilise and subdue the inhabitants of what is now called the "austrian militaryfrontier", the emperor who reigned at constantinople was not unlikely to find his neighbourhoodunpleasant. it was doubtless in consequence of the jealousy,arising from the conquest of sirmium, that
war soon broke out between the two powers.upper må“sia (in modern geography servia) was undoubtedly part of the eastern empire,yet it is there that we next find the gothic troops engaged in war. (505) mundo, the hun,a descendant of attila, was in league with theodoric, but at enmity with the empire,and was wandering with a band of freebooters through the half desolate lands south of thedanube. sabinian, the son of the general of the same name, who twenty-six years beforehad fought with theodoric in macedonia, was ordered by anastasius to exterminate thisdisorderly hun. with 10,000 men (among whom there were some bulgarian få“derati), andwith a long train of waggons containing great store of provisions, he marched from the balkansdown the valley of the morava. mundo, in despair
and already thinking of surrender, calledon his ostrogothic ally for aid, and pitzias, marching rapidly with an army of 2,500 youngand warlike goths (2,000 infantry and 500 cavalry), reached horrea margi, the placewhere mundo was besieged, in time to prevent his surrender. notwithstanding the enthusiasmof the gothic troops, the battle was most stubbornly contested, especially by the fiercebulgarians, but in the end pitzias obtained a complete victory. we may state this factwith confidence, as it is recorded in the chronicles of an official of the eastern empire.he says of sabinian: "having joined battle at horrea margi, and many of his soldiershaving been slain in this conflict and drowned in the river margus (morava), having alsolost all his wagons, he fled with a few followers
to the fortress which is called nato. in thislamentable war so promising an army fell, that, speaking after the manner of men, itsloss could never be repaired". without any general campaign, the quarrelbetween the goths and the empire seems to have smouldered on for three years longer.in his chronicle for the year 508, the same byzantine official who has just been quoted,says very honestly: "romanus count of the domestics and rusticus count of the scholarii,with 100 armed ships and as many cutters, carrying 8,000 soldiers, went forth to ravagethe shores of italy, and proceeded as far as the most ancient city of tarentum. havingrecrossed the sea they reported to anastasius cã¦sar this inglorious victory, which in piraticalfashion romans had snatched from their fellow-romans".
these words of the chronicler show to whatextent theodoric's kingdom was looked upon as still forming part of the roman empire,and they also point to the difficulty of the position of anastasius, who, whatever mightbe his cause of quarrel with theodoric, could only enforce his complaints against him byresorting to acts which in the eyes of his subjects wore the unholy appearance of a civilwar. though we are not precisely informed whenor how hostilities were brought to a close, it seems probable that soon after this raid,about the year 509, peace, unbroken for the rest of theodoric's reign, was re-establishedbetween ravenna and byzantium. the epistle which stands in the forefront of the "variousletters" of cassiodorus was probably written
on this occasion. "most clement emperor", says theodoric, orrather cassiodorus speaking in his name, "there ought to be peace between us since there isno real occasion for animosity. every kingdom should desire tranquillity, since under itthe people flourish and the common good is secured. tranquillity is the comely motherof all useful arts; she multiplies the race of men as they perish and are renewed; sheexpands our powers, she softens our manners, and he who is a stranger to her sway growsup in ignorance of all these blessings. therefore, most pious prince, it redounds to your glorythat we should now seek harmony with your government, as we have ever felt love foryour person. for you are the fairest ornament
of all realms, the safeguard and defence ofthe world; to whom all other rulers rightly look up with reverence, inasmuch as they recognisethat there is in you something which exists nowhere else. but we pre-eminently thus regardyou, since by divine help it was in your republic that we learned the art of ruling the romanswith justice. our kingdom is an imitation of yours, which is the mould of all good purposes,the only model of empire, just in so far as we follow you do we surpass all other nations. "you have often exhorted me to love the senate,to accept cordially the legislation of the emperors, to weld together all the membersof italy. then, if you wish thus to form my character by your counsels, how can you excludeme from your august peace? i may plead, too,
affection for the venerable city of rome,from which none can separate themselves who prize that unity which belongs to the romanname. "we have therefore thought fit to direct thetwo ambassadors who are the bearers of this letter to visit your most serene piety, thatthe transparency of peace between us, which from various causes hath been of late somewhatclouded, may be restored to-its former brightness by the removal of all contentions. for wethink that you, like ourselves, cannot endure that any trace of discord should remain betweentwo republics which, under the older princes, ever formed but one body, and which oughtnot merely to be joined together by a languid sentiment of affection, but strenuously tohelp one another with their mutually imparted
strength. let there be always one will, onethought in the roman kingdom. ... wherefore, proffering the honourable expression of oursalutation, we beg with humble mind that you will not even for a time withdraw from usthe most glorious charity of your mildness, which i should have a right to hope for evenif it were not granted to others. (the change from we to i, which here occurs in the original,is puzzling.) "other matters we have left to be suggestedto your piety verbally by the bearers of this letter, that on the one hand this epistolaryspeech of ours may not become too prolix, and on the other that nothing may be omittedwhich would tend to our common advantage". the letter which i have attempted thus tobring before the reader is one which almost
defies accurate translation. it is an exceedinglydiplomatic document, full of courtesy, yet committing the writer to nothing definite.the very badness of his style enables cassiodorus to envelop his meaning in a cloud of wordsfrom which the quã¦stor of anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaningthen, as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible english now.it is certainly difficult to acquit cassiodorus of the charge of a deficient sense of humour,when we find him putting into the mouth of his master, who had so often marched up anddown through thrace, ravaging and burning, these solemn praises of "tranquillity". andwhen we read the fulsome flattery which is lavished on anastasius, the almost obsequioushumbleness with which the great ostrogoth,
who was certainly the stronger monarch ofthe two, prays for a renewal of his friendship, we may perhaps suspect either that the "illiteratusrex" did not comprehend the full meaning of the document to which he attached his signature,or that cassiodorus himself, in his later years, when, after the death of his master,he republished his "various letters", somewhat modified their diction so as to make themmore roman, more diplomatic, more slavishly subservient to the emperor, than theodorichimself would ever have permitted. one other act of this emperor must be noticed,as illustrating the subject of the last chapter. when clovis returned in triumph from the visigothicwar (508) he found messengers awaiting him from anastasius, who brought to him some documentsfrom the imperial chancery which are somewhat
obscurely described as "codicils of the consulship".then, in the church of st. martin at tours he was robed in a purple tunic and chlamys,and placed apparently on his own head some semblance of the imperial diadem. at the porchof the basilica he mounted his horse and rode slowly through the streets of the city tothe other chief church, scattering largesse of gold and silver to the shouting multitude."from that day", we are told, "he was saluted as consul and augustus". the name of clovis does not, like that oftheodoric, appear in the fasti of imperial rome, and what the precise nature of the consulshipconferred by the "codicils" may have been, it is not easy to discover. but there is nodoubt that the authority which clovis up to
this time had exercised by the mere rightof the stronger, over great part of gaul, was confirmed and legitimised by this spontaneousact of the augustus at constantinople, nor that this eager recognition of the royaltyof the slayer of alaric was meant in some degree as a demonstration of hostility againstalaric's father-in-law, with whom anastasius had not then been reconciled. the coalition of eastern emperor and frankishking boded no good to italy. perhaps could the eye of anastasius have pierced throughthe mists of seven future centuries, could he have foreseen the insults, the extortions,the cruelties which a roman emperor at constantinople was to endure at the hands of "frankish" invaders,he would not have been so eager in his worship
of the new sun which was rising over gaulfrom out of the marshes of the scheldt. the remainder of the life of clovis seemsto have been chiefly spent in removing the royal competitors who were obstacles to hisundisputed sway over the franks. doubtless these were kings of a poor and barbarous type,with narrower and less statesmanlike views than those of the founder of the merovingiandynasty; but the means employed to remove them were hardly such as we should have expectedfrom the eldest son of the church, from him who had worn the white robe of a catechumenin the baptistery at rheims. his most formidable competitor was sigebert, king of the ripuarianfranks, that is the franks dwelling on both banks of the rhine between maintz and koln,in the forest of the ardennes and along the
valley of the moselle. but sigebert, who hadsent a body of warriors to help the salian king in his war against the visigoths, wasnow growing old, and among these barbarous peoples age and bodily infirmity were oftenconsidered as to some extent disqualifications for kingship. clovis accordingly sent messengersto cloderic, the son of sigebert, saying: "behold thy father has grown old and is lameon his feet. if he were to die, his kingdom should be thine and we would be thy friends".cloderic yielded to the temptation, and when his father went forth from koln on a huntingexpedition in the beech-forests of hesse, assassins employed by cloderic stole uponhim in his tent, as he was taking his noon-tide slumber, and slew him. the deed being done,cloderic sent messengers to clovis saying:
"my father is dead and his treasures are mine.send me thy messengers to whom i may confide such portion of the treasure as thou mayestdesire". "thanks", said clovis, "i will send my messengers, and do thou show them all thatthou hast, yet thou thyself shalt still possess all". when the messengers of clovis arrivedat the palace of the ripuanan, cloderic showed them all the royal hoard. "and here", saidhe, pointing to a chest, "my father used to keep his gold coins of the empire". (in hancarcellolam solitus erat pater meus numismata auri congerere.) "plunge thy hand in", saidthe messenger, "and search them down to the very bottom". the king stooped low to plungehis hand into the coins, and while he stooped the messenger lifted high his battle-axe andclove his skull. "thus", says the pious gregory,
who tells the story, "did the unworthy sonfall into the pit which he had digged for his own father". when clovis heard that both father and sonwere slain, he came to the same place (probably colonia) where all these things had come topass and called together a great assembly of the ripuarian people. "hear", he said,"what hath happened. while i was quietly sailing down the scheldt, cloderic, my cousin's son,practised against his father's life, giving forth that i wished him slain, and when hewas fleeing through the beech-forests he sent robbers against him, by whom he was murdered.then cloderic himself, when he was displaying his treasures, was slain by some one, i knownot whom. but in all these things i am free
from blame. for i cannot shed the blood ofmy relations: that were an unholy thing to do. but since these events have so happened,i offer you my advice if it seem good to you to accept it. turn you to me that you maybe under my defence". then they, when they heard these things, shouted approval and clashedtheir spears upon their shields in sign of assent, and raising clovis on a buckler proclaimedhim their king. and he receiving the kingdom and the treasures of sigebert added the ripuanansto the number of his subjects. "for", concludes gregory, bishop of tours, to whom we owe thestory of this enlargement of the dominions of his hero, "god was daily laying low theenemies of clovis under his hand and increasing his kingdom, because he walked before himwith a right heart and did those things which
were pleasing in his eyes". this ideal champion of orthodoxy in the sixthcentury then proceeded to clear the ground of the little salian kings, his nearer relativesand perhaps more dangerous competitors. chararic had failed to help him in his early days againstsyagrius. he was deposed: the long hair of the merovingians was shorn away from his headand from his son's head, and they were consecrated as priest and deacon in the catholic church.chararic wept and wailed over his humiliation, but his son, to cheer him, said, alludingto the loss of their locks: "the wood is green, and the leaves may yet grow again. would thathe might quickly perish who has done these things!" the words were reported to clovis,who ordered both father and son to be put
to death, and added their hoards to his treasure,their warriors to his host. chararic had not gone forth to the battleagainst syagrius, but ragnachar of cambray had given clovis effectual help in that crisisof his early fortunes. however ragnachar, by his dissolute life and his preposterousfondness for an evil counsellor named farro, had given great offence to the proud franks,his subjects. just as james i. said of the forfeited estates of raleigh: "i maun haethe land, i maun hae it for carr", so ragnachar said whenever anyone offered him a present,or whenever a choice dish was brought to table: "this will do for me and farro". clovis learnedand fomented the secret discontent. he sent to the disaffected nobles amulets and baldricsof copper-gilt--which they in their simplicity
took for gold,--inviting them to betray theirmaster. the secret bargain being struck, clovis then moved his army towards cambray. the anxiousragnachar sent scouts to discover the strength of the advancing host. "how many are they?"said he on their return. "quite enough for thee and farro", was the discouraging andtaunting reply: and in fact the soldiers of ragnachar seem to have been beaten as soonas the battle was set in array. with his hands bound behind his back, ragnachar and his brotherrichiar were brought into the presence of clovis. "shame on thee", said the indignantking, "for humiliating our race by suffering thy hands to be bound. it had been betterfor thee to die--thus", and the great battle-axe descended on his head. then turning to richiar,he said: "if thou hadst helped thy brother,
he would not have been bound"; and his skulltoo was cloven with the battle-axe. before many days the traitorous chiefs discoveredthe base metal in the ornaments which had purchased their treason, and complained ofthe fraud. "good enough gold", said clovis, "for men who were willing to betray theirlord to death"; and the traitors, trembling for their lives under his frown and fiercerebuke, were glad to leave the matter undiscussed. thus in all his arguments with the weakercreatures around him the frankish king was always right. it was always they, not he,who had befouled the stream. in this, shall i say, shameless plausibility of wrong, thefounder of the frankish monarchy was a worthy prototype of louis xiv. and of napoleon.
having slain these and many other kings, andextended his dominions over the whole of gaul, he once, in an assembly of his nobles, lamentedhis solitary estate. "alas, i am but a stranger and a pilgrim, and have no kith or kin whocould help me if adversity came upon me". but this he said, not in real grief for theirdeath, but in guile, in order that if there were any forgotten relative lurking anywherehe might come forth and be killed. none, however, was found to answer to the invitation. like all his family, clovis was short-lived,though not so conspicuously short-lived as many of his descendants. he died at forty-five,in the year 511, five years after the battle of the campus vogladensis. he was buried (511)in the church of the holy apostles at paris,
and his kingdom, consolidated with so muchlabor and at the price of so many crimes, was partitioned among his four sons. the aged emperor anastasius survived his frankishally seven years, and died in the eighty-ninth year of his age, 8th july, 518. his deathwas sudden, and some later writers averred that it was caused by a thunderstorm, of whichhe had always had a peculiar and superstitious fear. others declared that he was inadvertentlyburied alive, that he was heard to cry out in his coffin, and that when it was openedsome days after, he was found to have gnawed his arm. but these facts are not known toearlier and more authentic historians, and the invention of them seems to be only a rhetoricalway of putting the fact that he died at enmity
with the holy see. chapter xii.rome and ravenna. the death of anastasius was followed by changesin the attitude towards one another of pope and emperor, which embittered the closingyears of theodoric and caused his sun to set in clouds. but before we occupy ourselveswith these transactions, we may consider a little more carefully the relations betweentheodoric and his subjects in the happier days, the early and middle portion of hisreign, and for this purpose we will first of all hear what the chroniclers have to tellus of a memorable visit to rome which he paid in the eighth year after his accession, thatyear which, according to our present chronology,
is marked as the five hundredth after thebirth of christ. rome had been for more than two centuriesstrangely neglected by the rulers who in her name lorded it over the civilised world. eversince diocletian's reconstruction of the empire, it had been a rare event for an augustus tobe seen within her walls. even the emperor who had italy for his portion generally residedat milan or ravenna rather than on the banks of the tiber. constantine was but a hastyvisitor before he went eastward to build his marvellous new rome beside the bosphorus.his son constantius in middle life paid one memorable visit(357). thirty years later theodosiusfollowed his example. his son honorius celebrated there(403) his doubtful triumph over alaric,and his grandson, valentinian iii., was standing
in the roman campus martius when he fell underthe daggers of the avengers of aã«tius. but the fact that these visits are so pointedlymentioned shows the extreme rarity of their occurrence; nor was any great alteration wroughtherein by theodoric, for this visit to rome, which we are now about to consider, and whichlasted for six months, seems to have been the only one that he ever paid in the courseof his reign of thirty-three years. he came at an opportune time, when there wasa lull in the strife, amounting almost to civil war, caused by a disputed papal election.two years before, two bodies of clergy had met on the same day (22d. november) in differentchurches, in order to elect the successor to a deceased pope. the larger number, assembledin the mother-church, the lateran, elected
a deacon of sardinian extraction, named symmachus.the smaller but apparently more aristocratic body, backed by the favour of the majorityof the senate and supported by the delegates of the emperor, met in the church now calledby the name of s. maria maggiore and voted for the arch-presbyter laurentius. the effect of this contested election wasto throw rome into confusion. parties of armed men who favoured the cause of one or the othercandidate paraded the city, and all the streets were filled with riot and bloodshed. it seemedas if the days of marius and sulla were come back again, though it would have been impossibleto explain to either marius or sulla what was the nature of the contest, a dispute asto the right to be considered successor to
a fisherman of bethsaida. when the anarchywas becoming intolerable, the senate, clergy, and people determined to invoke the mediationof theodoric, thus furnishing the highest testimony to the reputation for fairness andimpartiality which had been earned by the arian king. both the rival bishops repairedto ravenna, and having laid the case before the king, heard his answer. "whichsoever candidatewas first chosen, if he also received the majority of votes, shall be deemed duly elected".both qualifications were united in symmachus, who was therefore for a time recognised aslawful pope even by laurentius himself. the disturbances broke out again later on;charges, probably false charges, of gross immorality were brought against symmachus,who fled from rome, returned, was tried by
a synod, and acquitted. it was not till afternearly six years had elapsed and six synods had been held, that laurentius and his partygave up the contest and finally acquiesced in the legitimacy of the claim of symmachusto the popedom. but most of these troubles were still to come:there was a lull in the storm, and it seemed as if the king's wise and righteous judgmenthad settled the succession to the papal chair, when in the year 500 theodoric visited rome,seeing for the first time, in full middle life, the city whose name he had doubtlessoften heard with a child's wonder and awe in his father's palace by the platten see.his first visit was paid to the great basilica of st. peter, outside the walls, where heperformed his devotions with all the outward
signs of reverence which would have been exhibitedby the most pious catholic. before he entered the gates of the city hewas welcomed by the senate and people of rome, who poured forth to meet him with every indicationof joy. borne along by the jubilant throng, he reached the senate-house, which still stoodin its majesty overlooking the roman forum. here, in some portico attached to the senate-house,which bore the name of the golden palm, he delivered an oration to the people. the accentof the speech may not have been faultless, the style was assuredly not ciceronian, butthe matter was worthy of the enthusiastic acclamations with which it was received. recognisingthe continuity of his government with that of the emperors who had preceded him, he promisedthat with god's help he would keep inviolate
all that the roman princes in the past hadordained for their people. so might a norman or angevin king, anxious to re-assure hissaxon subjects, swear to observe all the laws of the good king edward the confessor. this speech of theodoric's at the golden palmwas listened to by an obscure african monk, whose emotions on the occasion are describedto us by his biographer. fulgentius, the grandson of a senator of carthage, had forsaken whatseemed a promising official career, and had accepted the solitude and the hardships ofa monastic life, at a time when, owing to the severe persecution of the catholics bythe vandal kings, there was no prospect of anything but ignominy, exile, and perhapsdeath for every eminent confessor of the catholic
faith. fulgentius and his friends had sufferedmany outrages at the hands of numidian freebooters and vandal officers, and they meditated aflight into egypt, where they might practise a yet more rigid monastic rule undisturbedby the civil power. in his search after a suitable resting-place for his community,fulgentius, who was in the thirty-third year of his age, had visited sicily, and now hadreached rome in this same summer of 500, which was made memorable by theodoric's visit. "hefound", we are told, "the greatest joy in this city, truly called 'the head of the world,'both the senate and people of rome testifying their gladness at the presence of theodoricthe king. wherefore the blessed fulgentius, to whom the world had long been crucified,after he had visited with reverence the shrines
of the martyrs and saluted with humble deferenceas many of the servants of god as he could in so short a time be introduced to, stoodin that place which is called palma aurea while theodoric was making his harangue. there,as he gazed upon the nobles of the roman senate marshalled in their various ranks and adornedwith comely dignity, and as he heard with chaste ears the favouring shouts of the people,he had a chance of knowing what the boastful pomp of this world resembles. yet he lookednot willingly upon aught in this gorgeous spectacle, nor was his heart seduced to takeany pleasure in these worldly vanities, but rather kindled thereby to a more vehementdesire for jerusalem above. and thus with edifying discourse did he ever admonish thebrethren who were present: 'how fair must
be that heavenly jerusalem, if the earthlyrome be thus magnificent! and if in this world such honour is paid to the lovers of vanity,what honour and glory shall be bestowed on the saints who behold the eternal reality.'with many such words as these did the blessed fulgentius debate with them in a profitablemanner all that day, and now with his whole heart earnestly desiring to behold his monasteryagain, he sailed swiftly to africa, touching at sardinia, and presented himself to hismonks, who, in the excess of their joy, could scarcely believe that the blessed fulgentiuswas indeed returned". besides his promises of good government accordingto the old laws of empire, theodoric recognised the duty which, according to long-establishedusage, devolved upon the supreme ruler to
provide "panem et circenses" for the citizensof rome. the elaborate machinery, part of the crowned socialism of the empire, by whicha certain number of loaves of bread had been distributed to the poorer householders ofthe city, had probably broken down in the death-agony of the cã¦sars of the west, andhad not been again set going by odovacar. we are told that theodoric now distributedas rations "to the people of rome and to the poor" 120,000 modii of corn yearly. as thisrepresents only 30,000 bushels, and as in the flourishing days of the empire no fewerthan 200,000 citizens used to present themselves, probably once or twice a week, to receivetheir rations, it is evident that (if the chronicler's numbers are correct) we havehere no attempt to revive the wholesale distribution
of corn to the citizens--an expenditure withwhich the finances of theodoric's kingdom were probably quite unable to cope. what wasnow done was more strictly a measure of "out-door relief" for the absolutely destitute classes,and was therefore a more legitimate employment of the energies of the state than the socialisticattempt to feed a whole people,which had preceded it. at the same time that he granted these annonã¦,theodoric also set aside, from the proceeds of a certain wine-tax, two hundred poundsof gold (ã‚â£8,000) yearly for the restoration of the imperial dwellings on the palatine,and for the repair of the walls of rome. little did he foresee that a time would come whenthose walls, battered and breached as they
were, would be all too strong for the fortunesof the gothic warriors who would dash themselves vainly against their ramparts. it was now thirty years since theodoric, returningfrom his exile at constantinople, had been hailed by his gothic countrymen as a partnerof his father's throne. in memory of that event, from which he was separated by so manyyears of toil and triumph, so many battles, so many marches, so many weary negotiationswith emperors and kings, theodoric celebrated his tricennalia at rome. on this occasionthe gigantic flavian amphitheatre--the colosseum as we generally call it--seems not to havebeen opened to the people. the old murderous fights with gladiators which once dyed itspavement with human blood had been for a century
suppressed by the influence of the church,and the costly shows of wild beasts which were the permitted substitute would perhapshave taxed too heavily the still feeble finances of the state. but to the circus maximus allthe citizens crowded in order to see the chariot-races which were run there, and which recalled thebrilliant festivities of the empire. the circus, oval in form, notwithstanding its name, wassituated in the long valley between the palatine and aventine hills. high above, on the north-east,rose the palaces of the cã¦sars already mouldering to decay, but one of which had probably beenfurbished up to make it a fitting residence for the king of the goths and romans. on thesouth-west the solemn aventme still perhaps showed side by side the decaying temples ofthe gods and the mansions of the holy roman
matrons who, under the preaching of st. jerome,had made their sumptuous palaces the homes of monastic self-denial. in the long ellipsebetween the two hills the citizens of rome were ranged, not too many now in the dwindledstate of the city to find elbow-room for all. a shout of applause went up from senatorsand people as the gothic king, surrounded by a brilliant throng of courtiers, movedmajestically to his seat in the imperial podium. at one end of the circus were twelve portals(ostia), behind which the eager charioteers were waiting. in the middle of it there rosethe long platform called the spina, at either end of which stood an obelisk brought fromegypt by an emperor. (one of these obelisks now adorns the piazza del popolo, and theother the square in front of the lateran.)
at a signal from the king the races began.whether the first heat would be between big㦠or quadrig㦠(two-horse or four-horse chariots),we cannot say; but, of one kind or the other, twelve chariots bounded forth from the ostiathe moment that the rope which had hitherto confined them was let fall. seven times theycareered round and round the long spina, of course with eager struggles to get the insideturn, and perhaps with a not infrequent fall when a too eager charioteer, in his desireto accomplish this, struck against the protecting curbstone. ac each circuit was completed bythe foremost chariot, a steward of the races placed a great wooden egg in a conspicuousplace upon the spina to mark the score; and keen was the excitement when, in a match betweentwo well-known rivals, six eggs announced
to the spectators that the seventh, the decidingcircuit, had begun. the entire course thus traversed seven times in each direction madea race of between three and four miles, and each heat would probably occupy nearly a quarterof an hour. the number of heats (missus) was usually four and twenty, and we may thereforeimagine theodoric and his people occupying the best part of a summer day in watchingthe galloping steeds, the shouting, lashing drivers, and the fast-flashing chariot wheels. at rome, as at constantinople, though notin quite so exaggerated a degree, partisanship with the charioteers was more than a passingfancy; it was a deep and abiding passion with the multitude, and it sometimes went verynear to actual madness. four colours, the
blue and the green, the white and the red,were worn respectively by the drivers, who served each of the four joint-stock companies(as we should call them) that catered for the taste of the race-loving multitude. redand white had had their day of glory and still won a fair proportion of races, but the keenestand most terrible competition was between blue and green. at constantinople, a generationlater than the time which we have now reached, the undue favour which an emperor (justinian.)was accused (532) of showing to the blues caused an insurrection which wrapped the cityin flames and nearly cost that emperor his throne. no such disastrous consequences resultedfrom circus-partisanship in rome: but even in rome that partisanship was very bitter,and, in the view of a philosopher, supremely
ridiculous. as the sage cassiodorus remarked:"in these beyond all other shows, men's minds are hurried into excitement, without any regardto a fitting sobriety of character. the green charioteer flashes by: part of the peopleis in despair. the blue gets a lead: a larger part of the city is in misery. the populacecheer frantically when they have gained nothing; they are cut to the heart when they have receivedno loss; and they plunge with as much eagerness into these empty contests as if the wholewelfare of their imperilled country depended upon them". in two other letters theodoricis obliged seriously to chide the roman senate for its irascible temper in dealing with oneof the factions of the circus. a patrician and a consul, so it was alleged, had truculentlyassaulted the green party, and one man had
lost his life in the fray. the king orderedthat the matter should be enquired into by two officials of "illustrious" rank, who hadspecial jurisdiction in cases wherein nobles of high position were concerned. he then repliedto a counter-accusation which had been brought by the senators against the mob for assailingthem with rude clamours in the hippodrome. "you must distinguish", says the king, "betweendeliberate insolence and the festive impertinences of a place of public amusement. it is notexactly a congregation of catos that comes together at the circus. the place excusessome excesses. and moreover you must remember that these insulting cries generally proceedfrom the beaten party: and therefore you need not complain of clamour which is the resultof a victory that you earnestly desired".
again the king had to warn the senators notto bring disgrace on their good name and do violence to public order by allowing theirmenials to embroil themselves with the mob of the hippodrome. any slave accused of havingshed the blood of a free-born citizen was to be at once given up to justice; or elsehis master was to pay a fine of â£400, and to incur the severe displeasure of the king."and do not you, o senators, be too strict in marking every idle word which the mob mayutter in the midst of the general rejoicing. if any insult which requires special noticeshould be offered you, bring it before the prefect of the city. this is far wiser andsafer than taking the law into your own hands". the festivities which celebrated theodoric'svisit to the eternal city were perhaps somewhat
discordantly interrupted by the discoveryof a conspiracy against him, set on foot by a certain count odoin, about whom we haveno other information, but the form of whose name at once suggests that he was of gothic,not roman, extraction. it is possible that this conspiracy indicates the discontent ofthe old gothic nobility with the increasing tendency to copy roman civilisation and toassume imperial prerogatives which they observed in the king who had once been little morethan chief among a band of comrades. but we have not sufficient information as to thisconspiracy to enable us to fix its true place in the history of theodoric, nor can we evensay with confidence that it was directed against the king and not against one of his ministers.the result alone is certain. odoin's treachery
was discovered and he was beheaded in thesessorian palace, a building which probably stood upon the patrimony of constantine, hardby the southern wall of rome, and near to the spot where we now see the church of santacroce. at the request of the people, the words oftheodoric's harangue on his entrance into the city were engraved on a brazen tablet,which was fixed in a place of public resort, perhaps the roman forum. even so did the joyeuseentrã©e of a burgundian duke into brussels confirm and commemorate the privileges ofhis good subjects the citizens of brabant. upon the whole, there can be little doubtthat the half-year which theodoric spent in rome was really a time of joyfulness bothto prince and people, and that the tiles which
are still occasionally turned up by the spadein rome, bearing the inscription "domino nostro theodorico felix roma", were not merely thework of official flatterers, but did truly express the joy of a well-governed nation.after six months theodoric returned to that city, which, during the last thirty yearsof his life, he probably regarded as his home--ravenna by the adriatic,--and there he delighted theheart of his subjects by the pageants which celebrated the marriage of his niece amalabergawith hermanfrid, the king of the distant thuringians. this young prince, whom theodoric had adoptedas his "son by right of arms" had sent to his future kinsman a team of cream-colouredhorses of a rare breed, and theodoric sent in return horses, swords and shields, andother instruments of war, but, as he said,
"the greatest requital that we make is joiningyou in marriage to a woman of such surpassing beauty as our niece". the later fortunes of the ostrogothic princesswho thus migrated from ravenna to the banks of the elbe were not happy. a proud and ambitiouswoman, she is said to have stimulated her husband to make himself, by fratricide andcivil war, sole king of the thuringians. the help of one of the sons of clovis had beenunwisely invoked for this operation. so long as the ostrogothic hero lived, thuringia wassafe under his protection, but soon after his death dissensions arose between franksand thuringians; a claim of payment was made for the ill-requited services of the former.thuringia was invaded, (531) her king defeated,
and after a while treacherously slain. amalabergatook refuge with her kindred at ravenna, and after the collapse of their fortunes retiredto constantinople, where her son entered the imperial service. in after years that son,"amalafrid the goth", was not the least famous of the generals of justinian. the broad landsbetween the elbe and the danube, over which the thuringians had wandered, were added tothe dominions of the franks and became part of the mighty kingdom of austrasia. i have had occasion many times in the precedingpages to write the name of ravenna, the residence of most of the sovereigns of the sinking empire,and now the home of theodoric. let me attempt in a few paragraphs to give some faint ideaof the impression which this city, a boulder-stone
left by the icedrift of the dissolving empireamid the green fields of modern civilisation, produces on the mind of a traveller. ravenna stands in a great alluvial plain betweenthe apennines, the adriatic, and the po. the fine mud, which has been for centuries pouredover the land by the streams descending from the mountains, has now silted up her harbour,and classis, the maritime suburb of ravenna, which, in the days of odovacar and theodoric,was a busy sea port on the adriatic, now consists of one desolate church--magnificent in itsdesolation--and two or three farm-buildings standing in the midst of a lonely and fever-hauntedrice-swamp. between the city and the sea stretches for miles the glorious pine-forest, now alas!cruelly maimed by the hands of nature and
of man, by the frost of one severe winterand by the spades of the builders of a railway, but still preserving some traces of its ancientbeauty. here it was that theodoric pitched his camp when for three weary years he blockadedhis rival's last stronghold, and here by the deep trench (fossatum), which he had dug toguard that camp, he fought the last and not the least deadly of his fights, when odovacarmade his desperate sortie from the famine-stricken town. memories of a gentler kind, but stillnot wanting in sadness, now cluster round the solemn avenues of the pineta. there westill seem to see dante wandering, framing his lay of the "selva oscura", through whichlay his path to the unseen world, and ever looking in vain for the arrival of the messengerwho should summon him back to ungrateful florence.
there, in boccaccio's story, a maiden's haplessghost is for ever pursued through the woods by "the spectre-huntsman", guido cavalcanti,whom her cruelty had driven to suicide. and there, in our fathers' days, rode byron, likedante, an exile, if self-exiled, from his country, and feeding on bitter remembrancesof past praise and present blame, both too lightly bestowed by his countrymen. we leave the pine-wood and the desolate-lookingrice-fields, we cross over the sluggish streams--ronco and montone--and we stand in the streets ofhistoric ravenna. our first thoughts are all of disappointment. there is none of the trimbeauty of a modern city, nor, as we at first think, is there any of the endless picturesquenessof a well-preserved mediã¦val city. we look
in vain for any building like giotto's campanileat florence, for any space like that noble, crescent-shaped forum, full of memories ofthe middle ages, the piazzo del campo of siena. we see some strange but not altogether beautifulbell-towers and one or two brown cupolas breaking the sky-line, but that seems to be all, andour first feeling as i have said, is one of disappointment. but when we enter the churches,if we have leisure to study, them, if we can let their spirit mingle with our spirits,if we can quietly ask them what they have to tell us of the past, all disappointmentvanishes. for ravenna is to those who will study her attentively a very pompeii of thefifth century, telling us as much concerning those years of the falling empire and therising mediã¦val church as pompeii can tell
us of the social life of the romans in thedays of triumphant paganism. not that the record is by any means perfect.many leaves have been torn out of the book by the childish conceit of recent centuries,which vainly imagined that they could write something instead, which any mortal wouldnow care to read. the destroying hand of the so-called renaissance has passed over thesechurches, defacing sometimes the chancel, sometimes the nave. one of the most interestingof the churches of ravenna has "the cupola disfigured by wretched paintings which misleadthe eye in following the lines of the building". another has its apse covered with those giltspangles and clouds and cherubs which were the eighteenth century's ideal of impressivereligious art. the duomo, which should have
been one of the mosf interesting of all themonuments of ravenna, was almost entirely rebuilt in the last century, and is now scarcelyworth visiting. still, enough remains in the un-restored churches of ravenna to captivatethe attention of every student of history and every lover of early christian art. itis only necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent embellishers,as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar gossipers while listening to somenoble and entrancing piece of sacred music. thus concentrating our attention on that whichis really interesting and venerable in these churches, while we admire their long colonnades,their skilful use of ancient columns--some of which may probably have adorned the templesof olympian deities in the days of the emperors,--and
the exceedingly rich and beautiful new formsof capitals, of a design quite unknown to vitruvius, which the genius of romanesqueartists has invented, we find that our chief interest is derived from the mosaics withwhich these churches were once so lavishly adorned. mosaic, as is well-known, is themost permanent of all the processes of decorative art. fresco must fade sooner or later, andwhere there is any tendency to damp, it fades with cruel rapidity. oil painting on canvaschanges its tone in the long course of years, and the boundary line between cleaning andrepainting is difficult to observe. but the fragments out of which the mosaic pictureis formed, having been already passed through the fire, will keep their colour for centuries,we might probably say for millenniums. damp
injures them not, except by lessening thecement with which they are fastened to the wall, and therefore when restore tion of amosaic picture becomes necessary, a really conscientious restorer can always reproducethe picture with precisely the same form and colour which it had when the last stone wasinserted by the original artist. and thus, when we visit ravenna, we have the satisfactionof feeling that we are (in many cases) looking upon the very same picture which was gazedupon by the contemporaries of theodoric. portraits of theodoric himself, unfortunately we havenone; but we have two absolutely contemporary portraits of justinian, the overturner ofhis kingdom, and one of justinian's wife, the celebrated theodora. these pictures, itis interesting to remember, were considerably
older when cimabue found giotto in the sheepfoldsdrawing sheep upon a tile, than any picture of cimabue's or giotto's is at the presenttime. let us enter the church which is now called"s. apollinare within the walls", but which in the time of theodoric was called the churchof s. martin, often with the addition "de cã¦lo aureo", on account of the beautifulgilded ceiling which distinguished it from the other basilicas of ravenna. this churchwas built by order of theodoric, who apparently intended it to be his own royal chapel. probably,therefore, the great ostrogoth many a time saw "the divine mysteries" celebrated hereby bishops and priests of the arian communion. two long colonnades fill the nave of the church.the columns are classical, with corinthian
capitals, and are perhaps brought from someolder building. a peculiarity of the architecture consists in the high abacus--a frustum ofan inverted pyramid--which is interposed between the capital of the column and the arch thatsprings from it, as if to give greater height than the columns alone would afford. suchin its main features was the church of "st. martin of the golden heaven", when theodoricworshipped under its gorgeous roof. but its chief adornment, the feature which makes moreimpression on the beholder than anything else in ravenna, was added after theodoric's death,yet not so long after but that it may be suitably alluded to here as a specimen of the styleof decoration which his eyes must have been wont to look upon. about the year 560, afterthe downfall of the gothic monarchy, agnellus,
the catholic bishop of ravenna, "reconciled"this church, that is, re-consecrated it for the performance of worship by orthodox priests,and in doing so adorned the attics of the nave immediately above the colonnades withtwo remarkable mosaic friezes, each representing a long procession. on the north wall of the church we beholda procession of virgin martyrs. they are twenty-four in number, a little larger than life, andare chiefly those maidens who suffered in the terrible persecution of diocletian. theplace from which they start is a seaport town with ships entering the harbour, domes andcolumns and arcades showing over the walls of the city. an inscription tells us thatwe have here represented the city of classis,
the seaport of ravenna. by the time that wehave reached the last figure in this long procession we are almost at the east end ofthe nave. here we see the virgin-mother throned in glory with the infant jesus on her lap,and two angels on each side of her. but between the procession and the throne is interposedthe group of the three wise men, in bright-coloured raiment, with tiara-like crowns upon theirheads, stooping forward as if with eager haste to present their various oblations to thedivine child. on the right, or south wall of the church,a similar procession of martyred men, twenty-six in number, seems to move along, in all themajesty of suffering, bearing their crowns of martyrdom as offerings to the redeemer.the christ is here not an infant but a full-grown
man, the man of sorrows, his head encircledwith a nimbus, and two angels are standing on either side. the martyr-procession startsfrom a building, with pediment above and three arches resting upon pillars below. the intervalsbetween the pillars are partly filled with curtains looped up in a curious fashion andwith bright purple spots upon them. an inscription on this building tells us that it is palatium,that is theodoric's palace at ravenna. in both these processions the representationis, of course, far from the perfection of art. both the faces and the figures have acertain stiffness, partly due to the very nature of mosaic-work. there is also a sortof child-like simplicity in the treatment, especially of the female figures, which anunsympathetic critic would call grotesque.
but, i think, most beholders feel that thereis something indescribably solemn in these two great mosaic pictures in s. apollinaredentro. from the glaring, commonplace italian town with its police-notices and its proclamationof the number of votes given to the government of vittorio emmanuele, you step into the gratefulshade of the church and find yourself transported into the sixth century after christ. you arelooking on the faces of the men and maidens who suffered death with torture rather thandeny their lord. for thirteen centuries those two processions have seemed to be moving onupon the walls of the basilica, and another ceaseless procession of worshippers, goths,byzantines, lombards, franks, italians, has been in reality moving on beneath them tothe grave. and then you remind yourself that
when the artist sketched those figures onthe walls, he was separated by no longer interval than three long lives would have bridged over,from the days of the persecution itself, that there were still men living on the earth whoworshipped the olympian jupiter, and that the name of mohammed, son of abdallah, wasunknown in the world. so, as you gaze, the telescope of the historic imagination doesits work, and the far-off centuries become near. one or two other arian churches built duringtheodoric's reign in the northern suburb of the city have now entirely disappeared. therestill remains, however, the church which theodoric seems to have built as the cathedral of thearian community, while leaving the old metropolitan
church (ecclesia ursiana, now the duomo) asthe cathedral of the catholics. this arian cathedral was dedicated to st. theodore, buthas in later ages been better known as the church of the holy spirit. tasteless restorationhas robbed it of the mosaics which it doubtless once possessed, but it has preserved its finecolonnade consisting of fourteen columns of dark green marble with corinthian capitals,whose somewhat unequal height seems to show that they, like so many of their sisters,have been brought from some other building, where they have once perhaps served othergods. through the court-yard of the church of sanspirito, we approach a little octagonal building known both as the oratory of s. maria in cosmediaand as the arian baptistery. the great octagonal
font, which once stood in the centre of thebuilding, has disappeared, but we can easily reconstruct it in our imaginations from thesimilar one which still remains in the catholic baptistery. the interest of this buildingconsists in the mosaics of its cupola. on the disk, in the centre, is represented thebaptism of christ. the saviour stands, immersed up to his loins, in the jordan, whose waterflowing past him is depicted with a quaint realism. the baptist stands on his left sideand holds one hand over his head. on the right of the saviour stands an old man, who is generallysaid to represent the river-god, and the reed in his hand, the urn, from which water gushes,under his arms, certainly seem to favour this supposition. but in order to avoid so strangea medley of christianity and heathenism it
has been suggested that the figure may bemeant for moses, and in confirmation of this theory some keen-eyed beholders have thoughtthey perceived the symbolical horned rays proceeding from each side of the old man'sforehead. round this central disk are seen the figuresof the twelve apostles. they are divided into two bands of six each, who seem marching,with crowns in their hands, towards a throne covered with a veil and a cushion, on whichrests a cross blazing with jewels. st. peter stands on the right of the throne, st. paulon the left; and these two apostles carry instead of crowns, the one the usual keys,and the other two rolls of parchment. the interest of these figures, though they havesomething of the stern majesty of early mosaic-work,
is somewhat lessened by the fact that theyhave undergone considerable restoration. it is suggested, i know not whether on sufficientgrounds, that the figures of the apostles were added when the baptistery was "reconciled"to the catholic worship after the overthrow of the gothic dominion. two more buildings at ravenna which are connectedwith the name of theodoric require to be noticed by us,--his palace and his tomb. the storyof his tomb, however, will be best told when his reign is ended. as for the palace, whichonce occupied a large space in the eastern quarter of the city, we have seen that thereis a representation of it in mosaic on the walls of s. apollinare dentro. closely adjoiningthat church, and facing the modern corso garibaldi,
is a wall about five and twenty feet high,built of square brick-tiles, which has in its upper storey one large and six small archedrecesses, the arches resting on columns. only the front is ancient--it is admitted thatthe building behind it is modern. low down in the wall, so low that the citizens of ravenna,in passing, brush it with their sleeves, is a bath-shaped vessel of porphyry, which inthe days of archaeological ignorance used to be shown to strangers as "the coffin oftheodoric", but the fact is that its history and its purpose are entirely unknown. this shell of a building is called in theravenna guide-books "the palace of theodoric". experts are not yet agreed on the questionwhether its architectural features justify
us in referring it to the sixth century, thoughall agree that it does not belong to a much later age. it does not agree with the representationof the palatium in the church of s. apollinare dentro, and if it have anything whatever todo with it, it is probably not the main front, nor even any very important feature of thespacious palace, which, as we are told by the local historians, and learn from inscriptions,was surrounded with porticoes, adorned with the most precious mosaics, divided into severaltriclinia, surmounted by a tower which was considered one of the most magnificent ofthe king's buildings, and surrounded with pleasant and fruitful gardens, planted onground which had been reclaimed from the morass. but practically almost all the monuments ofthe ostrogothic hero except his tomb and the
three churches already described, have vanishedfrom ravenna. would that we could have seen the great mosaic which once adorned the pedimentof his palace. there theodoric stood, clad in mail, with spear and shield. on his leftwas a female figure representing the city of rome, also with a spear in her hand andher head armed with a helmet, while towards his right ravenna seemed speeding with onefoot on the land and the other on the sea. how this great mosaic perished is not madeclear to us. but there was also an equestrian statue of theodoric raised on a pyramid sixcubits high. horse and rider were both of brass, "covered with yellow gold", and theking here too had his buckler on his left arm, while the right, extended, pointed alance at an invisible foe.
this statue was carried off from ravenna,probably by the frankish emperor charles, to adorn his capital at aachen, and it wasstill to be seen there when agnellus wrote his ecclesiastical history of ravenna, threehundred years after the death of theodoric. chapter xiii.boã‹thius, hitherto the career of theodoric has beenone of almost unbroken prosperity, and the reader who has followed his history has perhapsgrown somewhat weary of the monotonous repetition of the praises of his mildness and his equity.unfortunately he will be thus wearied no longer. the sun of the great ostrogoth set in sorrow,and what was worse than in sorrow, in deeds of hasty wrath and cruel injustice, whichlost him the hearts of the majority of his
subjects and which have dimmed his fair famewith posterity. many causes combined to sadden and depressthe king's heart, as he felt old age creeping upon him. providence had not blessed him witha son; and while his younger rival, clovis, left four martial sons to defend (and alsoto partition) his newly formed kingdom, theodoric's daughter amalasuentha was the only child bornof his marriage with clovis' sister. in order to provide himself with a male heir(for the customs of the goths did not favour, if they did not actually exclude, female sovereignty),theodoric summoned to his court a distant relative, a young man named eutharic, descendedfrom the mighty hermanric, who was at the time living in spain. eutharic, who was wellreported of for bodily vigour and for statesmanlike
ability, came to the ostrogothic court, marriedamalasuentha (515), four years afterwards received the honour of a consulship, whichhe held along with the emperor justin, and exhibited games and combats of wild beaststo the populace of rome and ravenna on a scale of unsurpassed magnificence. but he died,probably soon after his consulship, leaving two children--a boy and a girl,--and thustheodoric's hope of bequeathing his crown to a mature and masculine heir was disappointed.still, however, he would not propose a female ruler to his old gothic comrades; and thelittle grandson, athalaric, though under ten years of age, was solemnly presented by himto an assembly of gothic counts and the nobles of the nation as their king.
the proclamation of athalaric was made whenthe king felt that he should shortly depart this life, probably in the summer of 526.i have mentioned it here in order to complete my statement as to the succession to the throne,but we will now return to an earlier period-to the events which immediately followed eutharic'sconsulship. coming as he did from spain, the visigothic lords of which were still an aristocracyof bitter arians in the midst of a cowed but catholic roman population, eutharic, who,as we are expressly told, "was too harsh and hostile to the catholic faith", may have tosome extent swayed the mind of his father-in-law away from its calm balance of even-handedjustice between the rival churches. but the state of affairs at constantinople exerciseda yet more powerful influence. anastasius,
who, though no arian, had during his longreign been always in an attitude of hostility towards the papal see, was now dead, and hadbeen succeeded by justin. this man, a soldier of fortune, who had as a lad tramped downfrom the macedonian highlands into the capital, with a wallet of biscuit over his shoulderfor his only property, had risen, by his soldierly qualities, to the position of count of theguardsmen, and by a judicious distribution of gold among the soldiers--gold which wasnot his own, but had been entrusted to him for safe-keeping,--he won for himself thediadem, and for his nephew, as it turned out, the opportunity of making his name forevermemorable in history. justin was absolutely illiterate--the story about the stencilledsignature is told of him as well as of theodoric,--but
he was strictly orthodox, and his heart wasset on a reconciliation with the roman see. this measure was also viewed with favour bythe majority of the populace of constantinople, with whom the heterodoxy of anastasius hadbecome decidedly unpopular. thus the negotiations for a settlement of the dispute went prosperouslyforward. the anathemas which were insisted upon by the roman pontiff were soon conceded,the names of zeno, of anastasius, and of five patriarchs of constantinople who had daredto dissent from the roman see were struck out of the "diptychs" (or lists of those men,living or dead, whom the church regarded as belonging to her communion); and thus thefirst great schism between the eastern and western churches--a schism which had lastedfor thirty-five years--was ended.
it was probably foreseen by the statesmenof ravenna that this reconciliation between pope and emperor, a reconciliation which hadbeen celebrated by the enthusiastic shout of the multitude in the great church of thedivine wisdom at constantinople, would sooner or later bring trouble to theodoric's arianfellow-worshippers. in point of fact, however, an interval of nearly six years elapsed beforeany actual persecution of the arians of the empire was attempted. the first cause of alienationbetween the ostrogothic king and his catholic subjects seems to have arisen in connectionwith the jews. theodoric, on account of some fear of invasion by the barbarians beyondthe alps, was dwelling at verona. that city, the scene of his most desperate battle withodovacar, commanding as it does the valley
of the adige and the road by the brenner passinto the tyrol, was probably looked upon by theodoric as the key of north-eastern italy,and when there was any danger of invasion he preferred to hold his court there ratherthan in the safer but less convenient ravenna. there too he may probably have often receivedthe ambassadors of the northern nations, who went back to their homes with those storiesof the might and majesty of the ostrogothic king which made "dietrich of bern" (theodoricof verona) a name of wonder and a theme of romance to many generations of german minstrels.while theodoric was dwelling in the city of the adige, tidings came to him, apparentlyfrom his son-in-law eutharic, whom he had left in charge at ravenna, that the wholecity was in an uproar. the jews, of whom there
was evidently a considerable number, wereaccused of having made sport of the christian rite of baptism by throwing one another intoone of the two muddy rivers of ravenna, and also, in some way not described to us, tohave mocked at the supper of the lord. the christian populace of the city were excitedto such madness by these rumours that they broke out into rioting, which neither thegothic vicegerent, eutharic, nor their own bishop, peter iii., was able to quell, andwhich did not cease till all the jewish synagogues of the city were laid in ashes. when tidings of these events were broughtto verona by the grand chamberlain triwan (or trigguilla) who, as an arian, was suspectedof favouring the jews, and when the hebrews
came themselves to invoke the justice of theking, theodoric's righteous indignation was kindled against these flagrant violationsof civilitas. it was not, indeed, the first time that his intervention had been claimedon behalf of the persecuted children of israel. at milan and at genoa they had already appealedto him against the vexations of their neighbours, and at rome the mob, excited by some idlestory of harsh punishments inflicted by the jews on their christian servants, had burnedtheir synagogue in the trastevere to the ground. the protection claimed had always been freelyconceded. theodoric, while expressing or permitting cassiodorus to express his pious wonder thata race which wilfully shut itself out from the eternal rest of heaven should care forquietness on earth, was strong in declaring
that for the sake of civilitas justice wasto be secured even for the wanderers from the right religious path, and that no oneshould be forced to believe in christianity against his will. nor was this willingnessto protect the jews from popular fanaticism peculiar to theodoric. always, so long asthe goths, either the western or eastern branch, remained arian, the jews found favour in theireyes, and jacob had rest under the shadow of the sons of odin. now, therefore, the kingsent an edict addressed to eutharic and bishop peter, ordaining that a pecuniary contributionshould be levied on all the christian citizens of ravenna, out of which the synagogues shouldbe rebuilt, and that those who were not able to pay their share of this contribution shouldbe flogged through the streets, the crier
going behind them and in a loud voice proclaimingtheir offence. the order was doubtless obeyed, but from that day there was a secret spiritof rebellion in the hearts of the roman citizens of ravenna. from this time onward occasions of differencebetween theodoric and his roman subjects were frequently arising. for some reason whichis not explained to us, he ordered the catholic church of st. stephen in the suburbs of veronato be destroyed. then came suspicion, the child of rancour. an order was put forth forbiddingthe inhabitants of roman origin to wear any arms, and this prohibition extended even topocket-knives. in the excited state of men's minds earth and heaven seemed to them to befull of portents..there were earthquakes;
there was a comet with a fiery tail whichblazed for fifteen days; a poor gothic woman lay down under a portico near theodoric'spalace at ravenna and gave birth (so we are assured) to four dragons, two of which, havingone head between them, were captured, while the other two, sailing away eastward throughthe clouds, were seen to fall headlong into the sea. more important than these old wives' fableswas the changed attitude and the wavering loyalty of the roman senate. from the remarksmade in an earlier chapter, it will be clear that a conscientious roman citizen might trulyfeel that he owed a divided allegiance to the ostrogoth, his ruler de facto, and tothe augustus at constantinople, his sovereign
de jure. through the years of religious schismthis conflict of duties had slumbered, but now, with the enthusiastic reconciliationbetween the see of rome and the throne of constantinople, it awoke; and in that agewhen, as has been already said, religion was nationality, an orthodox eastern emperor seemeda much more fitting object of homage than an arian italian king. there were two men, united by the ties ofkindred, who seemed marked out by character and position as the leaders of a patrioticparty in the senate, if such a party could be formed. these men were boã«thius and hisfather-in-law symmachus, both roman nobles of the great and ancient anician gens. boã«thius,whose name we have already met with as the
skilful mechanic who was requested to constructa water-clock and a sun-dial for the king of the burgundians, was a man of great andvaried accomplishments--philosopher, theologian, musician, and mathematician. he had translatedthirty books of aristotle into latin for the benefit of his countrymen; his treatise onmusic was for many centuries the authoritative exposition of the science of harmony. he hadheld the high honour of the consulship in 510; twelve years later he had the yet higherhonour of seeing his two sons, symmachus and boã«thius, though mere lads, arrayed in thetrabea of the consul. symmachus the other leader of the patrioticparty in the roman senate had memories of illustrious ancestors behind him. a centurybefore, another symmachus had been the standard-bearer
of the old pagan party, and had deliveredtwo great orations in order to prevent the christian emperors from removing the venerablealtar of victory from the senate-house. now, his descendant and namesake was an equallyfirm adherent of christianity, a friend and counsellor of popes, a man who was willingto encounter obloquy and even death in behalf of nicene orthodoxy. he had been consul solong ago as in the reign of odovacar, he had been an "illustrious" prefect of the cityunder theodoric; he was now patrician and chief of the senate (caput senatus). the lasttwo titles conferred honour rather than power; the headship of the senate especially beinggenerally held by the oldest, and if not by the oldest, by the most esteemed and veneratedmember of that body. such was symmachus, a
man full of years and honours, a historian,an orator, and a generous contributor of some portion of his vast wealth for the adornmentof his native city. boã«thius, left an orphan in childhood, hadenjoyed the wise training of his guardian symmachus. when he came to man's estate hemarried that guardian's daughter rusticiana. though there was the difference of a generationbetween them, a close friendship united the old and the middle-aged senators, and theyoung consuls sprung from this alliance, who were the hope of their blended lines, bore,as we have seen, the names of both father and grandfather. up to the year 523, boã«thius appears to haveenjoyed to the full the favour of theodoric.
from a chapter of his autobiography we learnthat he had already often opposed the ministers of the crown when he found them to be unjustand rapacious men. "how often" says he, "have i met the rush of cunigast, when coming open-mouthedto devour the substance of the poor! how often have i baffled the all but completed schemesof injustice prepared by the chamberlain trigguilla! how often have i interposed my influence toprotect the unhappy men whom the unpunished avarice of the barbarians was worrying withinfinite calumnies! paulinus, a man of consular rank, whose wealth the hungry dogs of thepalace had already devoured in fancy, i dragged as it were out of their very jaws". but allthese acts of righteous remonstrance against official tyranny, though from the names giventhey seem to have been chiefly directed against
gothic ministers, had not forfeited for boã«thiusthe favour of his sovereign. the proof of this is furnished by the almost unexampledhonour conferred upon him--certainly with theodoric's consent--by the elevation of histwo sons to the consulship. the exultant father, from his place in the senate, expressed histhanks to theodoric in an oration of panegyric, which is now no longer extant, but was consideredby contemporaries a masterpiece of brilliant rhetoric. so far all had gone well with the fortunesof boã«thius; but now, perhaps about the middle of 523, there came a great and calamitouschange. we must revert for a few minutes to the family circumstances of theodoric, inorder to understand the influences which were
embittering his spirit against his catholic--thatis to say, his roman--subjects. the year before, his grandson segeric, the burgundian, hadbeen treacherously assassinated by order of his father, king sigismund, who had becomea convert to the orthodox creed, and after the death of theodoric's daughter had marrieda catholic woman of low origin. in the year 523 itself, thrasamund, king of the vandals,died and was succeeded by his cousin hilderic, son of one of the most ferocious persecutorsof the catholic church, but himself a convert to her creed. notwithstanding an oath whichhilderic had sworn to his predecessor on his death-bed, never to use his royal power forthe restoration of the churches to the catholics, hilderic had recalled the bishops of the orthodoxparty and was in all things reversing the
bitter persecuting policy of his ancestors,amalafrida, the sister of theodoric and widow of thrasamund, who had been for nearly twentyyears queen of the vandals, passionately resented this undoing of her dead husband's work andput herself at the head of a party of insurgents, who called in the aid of the moorish barbarians,but who were, notwithstanding that aid, defeated by the soldiers of hilderic at capsa. amalafridaherself was taken captive and shut up in prison, probably about the middle of 523. thus everywhere the arian league, of whichtheodoric had been the head, and which had practically given him the hegemony of teutoniceurope, was breaking down; and in its collapse disaster and violent death were coming uponthe members of theodoric's own family. if
eutharic himself, as seems probable, had diedbefore this time, and was no longer at the king's side to whisper distrust of the catholicsat every step, and to put the worst construction on the actions of every patriotic roman, yeteven eutharic's death increased the difficulties of theodoric's position, and his doubts asto the future fortunes of a dynasty which would be represented at his death only bya woman and a child. and these difficulties and doubts bred in him not depression, butan irascible and suspicious temper, which had hitherto been altogether foreign to hiscalm and noble nature. such was the state of things at the courtof ravenna when, in the summer or early autumn of 523, cyprian, reporter in the king's court,accused the patrician albinus of sending letters
to the emperor justin hostile to the royalrule of theodoric. of the character and history of albinus, notwithstanding his eminent station,we know but little. he was not only patrician, but illustris--that is, in modern phraseology,he had held an office of cabinet-rank. on the occasion of some quarrel between the factionsof the circus, theodoric had graciously ordered him to assume the patronage of the green faction,and to conduct the election of a pantomimic performer for that party. he had also receivedpermission to erect workshops overlooking the forum on its northern side, on conditionthat his buildings did not in any way interfere with public convenience or the beauty of thecity. evidently he was a man of wealth and high position, one of the great nobles ofrome, but perhaps one who, up to this time,
had not taken any very prominent part in publicaffairs. his accuser, cyprian, still apparently a young man, was also a roman nobleman. hisfather had been consul, and he himself held at this time the post of referendarius (or,as i have translated it, reporter) in the king's court of appeal. his ordinary dutywas to ascertain from the suitor what was the nature of his plea, to state it to theking, and then to draw up the document, which contained the king's judgment. it was an arduousoffice to ascertain from the flurried and often trembling suitor, in the midst of thehubbub of the court, the precise nature of his complaint, and a responsible one to expressthe king's judgment, neither less nor more, in the written decree. there was evidentlygreat scope for corrupt conduct in both capacities,
if the referendarius was open to bribes; andin the "formula", by which these officers were appointed, some stress is laid on thenecessity of their keeping a pure conscience in the exercise of their functions. cyprianseems to have been a man of nimble and subtle intellect, who excelled in his statement ofa case. so well was this done by him, from the two opposite points of view, that plaintiffand defendant in turn were charmed to hear each his own version of the case so admirablypresented to the king. of later years, theodoric, weary of sitting in state in the crowded hallof justice, had often tried his cases on horseback. riding forth into the forest he had orderedcyprian to accompany him, and to state in his own lively and pleasing style the "for"and "against" of the various causes that came
before him on appeal. even, we are told, whentheodoric was roused to anger by the manifest injustice of the plea that was thus presented,he could not help being charmed by the graceful manner in which the young referendarius, thetemporary asserter of the claim, brought it under his notice. thus trained to subtle eloquence,cyprian had been recently sent on an embassy to constantinople, and had there shown himselfin the word-fence a match for the keenest of the greeks. lately returned, as it shouldseem, from this embassy, he came forward in the roman senate and accused the patricianalbinus of outstepping the bounds of loyalty to the ostrogothic king in the letters whichhe had addressed to the byzantine emperor. in this accusation was cyprian acting thepart of an honest man or of a base informer?
the times were difficult: the relations ofa roman senator to emperor and king were, as i have striven to show, intricate and ill-defined;it was hard for even good men to know on which side preponderated the obligations of loyalty,of honour, and of patriotism. on the one hand cyprian may have been a true and faithfulservant of theodoric, who had in his embassy at constantinople discovered the threads ofa treasonable intrigue, and who would not see his master betrayed even by romans withoutdenouncing their treason. as a real patriot he may have seen that the days of purely romanrule in italy were over, that there must be some sort of amalgamation with these new teutonicconquerors, who evidently had the empire of the world before them, that it would be betterand happier, and in a certain sense more truly
roman, for italy to be ruled by a heroic "kingof the goths and romans" than for her to sink into a mere province ruled by exarchs andlogothetes from corrupt and distant constantinople. this is one possible view of cyprian's characterand purposes. on the other hand, he may have been a slippery adventurer, intent on carvingout his own fortune by whatever means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the noblestof his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition. in his secret heart he may havecared nothing for the noble old goth, his master, with whom he had so often ridden inthe pine-wood; nothing, too, for the great name of rome, the city in which his fatherhad once sat as consul. long accustomed to state both sides of a case with equal dexterity,and without any belief in either, this nimble-tongued
advocate, who had already found that greecehad nothing to teach him that was new, may have had in his inmost soul no belief in god,in country, or in duty, but in cyprian alone. both views are possible; we have before usonly the passionate invectives of his foes and the stereotyped commendations of his virtuespenned by his official superiors, and i will not attempt to decide between them. when cyprian brought his charge of disloyaltyagainst albinus, the accused patrician, who was called into the presence of the king,at once denied the accusation. an angry debate probably followed, in the course of whichboã«thius claimed to speak the attention of all men was naturally fixed upon him, forby the king's favour, the same favour which
in the preceding year had raised his two sonsto the consulship, he was now filling the great place of master of the offices. "false",said boã«thius in loud, impassioned tones, "is the accusation of cyprian; but whateveralbinus did, i and the whole senate of rome, with one purpose, did the same. the chargeis false, o king theodoric".the inter-position of boã«thius was due to a noble and generousimpulse, but it was not perhaps wise, in view of all that had passed, and without in anyway helping albinus, it involved boã«thius in his ruin. cyprian, thus challenged, includedthe master of the offices in his accusation, and certain persons, not goths, but romansand men of senatorial rank, opilio (the brother of cyprian), basilius, and gaudentius, cameforward and laid information against boã«thius.
here the reader will naturally ask, "of whatdid these informers accuse him?" but to that question it is not possible to give a satisfactoryanswer. he himself in his meditations on his trial says: "of what crime is it that i amaccused? i am said to have desired the safety of the senate. 'in what way?' you may ask.i am accused of having prevented an informer from producing certain documents in orderto prove the senate guilty of high treason. shall i deny the charge? but i did wish forthe safety of the senate and shall never cease to wish for it, nor, though they have abandonedme, can i consider it a crime to have desired the safety of that venerable order. that posteritymay know the truth and the real sequence of events, i have drawn up a written memorandumconcerning the whole affair. for, as for these
forged letters upon which is founded the accusationagainst me of having hoped for roman freedom, why should i say anything about them? theirfalsehood would have been made manifest, if i could have used the confession of the informersthemselves, which in all such affairs is admitted to have the greatest weight. as for romanfreedom, what hope is left to us of attaining that? would that there were any such hope.had the king questioned me, i would have answered in the words canius, when he was questionedby the emperor caligula as to his complicity in a a conspiracy formed against him. 'ifi,' said he, 'had known, thou shouldest never have known'" these words, coupled with some bitter statementsas to the tainted character of the informers
against him, men oppressed by debt and accusedof peculation, constitute the only statement of his case by boã«thius which is now available.the memorandum so carefully prepared in the long hours of his imprisonment has not reachedposterity. would that it might even yet be found in the library of some monastery, orlurking as a palimpsest under the dull commentary of some mediã¦val divine! it could hardlyfail to throw a brilliant, if not uncoloured light on the politics of italy in the sixthcentury. but, trying as we best may to spell out the truth of the affair from the passionatecomplaints of the prisoner, i think we may discern that there had been some correspondenceon political affairs between the senate and the emperor justin, correspondence which wasperfectly regular and proper if the emperor
was still to them "dominus noster" (our lordand master), but which was kept from the knowledge of "the king of the goths and romans", andwhich, when he heard of it, he was sure to resent as an act of treachery to himself.that boã«thius, the master of the offices under theodoric, should have connived at thiscorrespondence, naturally exasperated the master who had so lately heaped favours onthis disloyal servant. but in addition to this he used the power which he wielded asmaster of the offices, that is, head of the whole civil service of italy, to prevent somedocuments which would have compromised the safety of the senate from coming to the knowledgeof theodoric. all this was dangerous and doubtful work, and though we may find it hard to condemnboã«thius, drawn as he was in opposite directions
by the claims of historic patriotism and bythose of official duty, we can hardly wonder that theodoric, who felt his throne and hisdynasty menaced, should have judged with some severity the minister who had thus betrayedhis confidence. the political charge against boã«thius wasblended with one of another kind, to us almost unintelligible, a charge of sacrilege andnecromancy. at least this seems to be the only possible explanation of the followingwords written by him: "my accusers saw that the charge 'of desiring the safety of thesenate' was no crime but rather a merit; and therefore, in order to darken it by the mixtureof some kind of wickedness, they falsely declared that ambition for office had led me to pollutemy conscience with sacrilege. but philosophy
had chased from my breast all desire of worldlygreatness, and under the eyes of her who had daily instilled into my mind the pythagoreanmaxim 'follow god,' there was no place for sacrilege. nor was it likely that i shouldseek the guardianship of the meanest of spirits when divine philosophy had formed and mouldedme into the likeness of god. the friendship of my father-in-law, the venerable symmachus,ought alone to have shielded me from the suspicion of such a crime. but alas! it was my verylove for philosophy that exposed me to this accusation, and they thought that i was ofkin to sorcerers because i was steeped in philosophic teachings". the only reasonable explanation that we canoffer of these words is that mediã¦val superstition
was already beginning to cast her shadow overeurope, that already great mechanical skill, such as boã«thius was reputed to possess whenhis king asked him to manufacture the water-clock and the sun-dial, caused its possessor tobe suspected of unholy familiarity with the evil one; perhaps also that astronomy, whichwas evidently the favourite study of boã«thius, was perilously near to astrology, and thathis zeal in its pursuit may have exposed him to some of the penalties which the theodosiancode itself, the law-book of imperial rome, denounced against "the mathematicians". this seems to be all that can now be donetowards re-writing the lost indictment under which boã«thius was accused. the trial wasconducted with an outrageous disregard of
the forms of justice. it took place in thesenate-house at rome; boã«thius was apparently languishing in prison at pavia, where he hadbeen arrested along with albinus. thus at a distance of more than four hundred milesfrom his accusers and his judges was the life of this noble roman, unheard and undefended,sworn away on obscure and preposterous charges by a process which was the mere mockery ofa trial. he was sentenced to death and the confiscation of his property; and the judgeswhose trembling lips pronounced the monstrous sentence were the very senators whose causehe had tried to serve. this thought, the remembrance of this base ingratitude, planted the sharpeststing of all in the breast of the condemned patriot. it is evident that the senate themselveswere in desperate fear of the newly awakened
wrath of theodoric, and the fact that theyfound boã«thius guilty cannot be considered as in any degree increasing the probabilityof the truth of the charges made against him. but it does perhaps somewhat lessen his reputationfor far-seeing statesmanship, since it shows how thoroughly base and worthless was thebody for whose sake he sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit thesenate would have been to take its old place as ruler of italy, if byzantine emperor andostrogothic king could have been blotted out of the political firmament. boã«thius seems to have spent some monthsin prison after his trial, and was perhaps transferred from pavia to "the ager calventianus",a few miles from milan. there at any rate
he was confined when the messenger of deathsent by theodoric found him. there is some doubt as to the mode of execution adopted.one pretty good contemporary authority says that he was beheaded, but the writer whomi have chiefly followed, who was almost a contemporary, but a credulous one, says thattorture was applied, that a cord was twisted round his forehead till his eyes started fromtheir sockets, and that finally in the midst of his torments he received the coup de grã¢cefrom a club. in the interval which elapsed between thecondemnation and the death of this noble man, who died verily as a martyr for the greatmemories of rome, he had time to compose a book which exercised a powerful influenceon many of the most heroic spirits of the
middle ages. this book, the well-known, ifnot now often read, "consolation of philosophy", was translated into english by king alfredand by geoffrey chaucer, was imitated by sir thomas more (whose history in some respectsresembles that of boã«thius), and was translated into every tongue and found in every conventlibrary of mediã¦val europe. there is a great charm, the charm of sadness, about many ofits pages, and it may be considered from one point of view as the swan's song of the dyingroman world and the dying greek philosophy, or from another, as the book of job of thenew mediã¦val world which was to be born from the death of rome. for like the book of job,the "consolation" is chiefly occupied with a discussion of the eternal mystery why arighteous and almighty ruler of the world
permits bad men to flourish and increase,while the righteous are crushed beneath their feet: and, as in the book of job, so here,the question is not, probably because it cannot be, fully answered. it is the consolation of philosophy, not ofreligion, or at any rate not of revealed religion, which is here administered. so marked is thesilence of boã«thius on all those arguments, which a discussion of this kind inevitablysuggests to the mind of a believer in the crucified one, that scholars long supposedthat he was not even by profession a christian. a manuscript which has been lately discoveredseems to prove beyond a doubt that boã«thius was a christian, and wrote orthodox treatiseson disputed points of theology; but for some
reason or other he fell back on his earlyphilosophical studies, rather than on his formal and conventional christianity, whenhe found himself in the deep waters of adversity and imminent death. he represents himselfin the "consolation" as lying on his dungeon-couch, sick in body and sad at heart, and courtingthe muses as companions of his solitude. they come at his call, but are soon unceremoniouslydismissed by one nobler than themselves, who asserts an older and higher right to cheerher votary in the day of his calamity. this is philosophy, a woman of majestic stature,whose head seems to touch the skies, and who has undying youth and venerable age mysteriouslyblended in her countenance. having dismissed the muses, she sits by the bedside of boã«thiusand looks with sad and earnest eyes into his
face. she invites him to pour out his complaints;she sings to him songs first of pity and reproof, then of fortitude and hope; she reasons withhim as to the instability of the gifts of fortune, and strives to lead him to the contemplationof the summum bonum, which is god himself, the knowledge of whom is the highest happiness.then, in order a little to lighten his difficulties as to the permission of evil by the all-wiseand almighty one, she enters into a discussion of the relation between divine foreknowledgeand human free-will, but this discussion, a thorny and difficult one, is not ended whenthe book comes to an abrupt conclusion, being probably interrupted by the arrival of themessengers of theodoric, who brought the warrant for the writer's execution.
the "consolation of philosophy" is partlyin prose, partly in verse. the prose is generally strong, clear, and comparatively pure in style,wonderfully superior to the vapid diffusiveness of cassiodorus and most writers of the age.the interspersed poems are sometimes in hexameters, but more often in the shorter lines and morevaried metres of horace, and are to some extent founded upon the tragic choruses of seneca.it is of course impossible in this place to give any adequate account of so importanta work and one of such far-reaching influence as the "consolation" but the following translationof one of the poems in which the prisoner makes his moan to the almighty may give thereader some little idea of the style and matter of the treatise.
the harmony of the natural world: the discordof the moral world. oh thou who hast made this starry whole, who hast fixed on high thy throne; who biddest the blue above us roll, and whose sway the planets own! at thy bidding she turns, the changing moon to her brother her full-fed fire, dimming the stars with her light, which soon wanes, as she draws to him nigher.
thou givest the word, and the westering star, the hesper who watched o'er night's upspringing, changing his course, shines eastward far, phosphor now, for the sun's inbringing. when the leaves fall fast, 'neath autumn'sblast, thou shortenest the reign of light. in radiant june thou scatterest soon the fast-flown hours of night. the leaves which fled from the cruel north
are with zephyr's breath returning, and from seeds which the bear saw droppedin earth springs the corn for the dog-star's burning. thus all stands fast by thine old decree, nothing wavers in nature's plan: in all her changes she bows to thee: yea, all stands fast but man. oh! why is the wheel of fortune rolled, while guilt thy vengeance shuns?
why sit the bad on their thrones of gold, and trample thine holy ones? why doth virtue skulk where none may see in the great world's corners dim? and the just man mark the knave go free, while the penalty falls on him? no storm the perjurer's soul o'erwhelms, serene the false one stands: he flatters, and kings of mighty realms
are as clay in his moulding hands. oh ruler! look on these lives of ours, thus dashed on fortune's sea. thou rulest the calm eternal powers, but thine handiwork, too, are we. ah! quell these waves with their tossingshigh; let them own thy bound and ban: and as thou rulest the starry sky rule also the world of man!
copper piece of athalaric. ten nummi.(head of justinian--?) chapter xiv.theodoric's tomb. the death of boã«thius occurred probably aboutthe middle of 524, and in the same year, as it would seem, theodoric left verona and returnedto his old quarters at ravenna. the danger from the barbarians on the northern frontierhad apparently been averted, but a far greater danger, the hatred and the terror of his subjectsof roman origin, had entered his kingdom. it was probably during this same year 524that the zeal of the orthodox emperor justin began to flame out against the arians. theirchurches were taken from them and given to the catholics, and, as we hear that severalarians at this time embraced the catholic
faith, we may conjecture that the usual methodsof conversion in that age, confiscation, imprisonment, and possibly torture, had been pretty freelyemployed. these measures, coming close after the alleged conspiracy of the senators, orperhaps simultaneously with it, completed the exasperation of theodoric, he sent forthe pope, john i., a tuscan, who had been lately elevated to the papal chair, and whenthe successor of st. peter appeared at ravenna commanded him, with some haughtiness in histone, to proceed to constantinople, to the emperor justin, and tell him that "he mustin no wise attempt to win over those whom he calls heretics to the catholic religion".the pope is said to have made some protestations, distinguishing between his duty to god andhis duty to his king, but nevertheless accepted
a commission of some kind or other to treatwith the emperor on the subject of mutual toleration between catholics and arians. (525) he set forth at the head of a brillianttrain, accompanied by ecclesius, bishop of ravenna, and eusebius, bishop of fano, bysenator theodorus, who had been consul in 505, by senator importunus, consul in 509,who was descended from the historic family of the decii, and from whom his coevals expecteddeeds worthy of that illustrious name, by senator agapetus, who had been consul alongwith the eastern emperor in 517, and by many other noblemen and bishops. the visit of a pope to constantinople, anevent which had not occurred since the very
earliest days of the new capital, createdprofound sensation in that city and was the very thing to cement that union between thepapacy and the empire which constituted theodoric's greatest danger. the whole city poured forthwith crosses and candles to meet the pope and his companions at the twelfth milestone,and to testify with shouts their veneration for the apostles peter and paul, whose representativethey deemed that they saw before them. "justinus augustus", the fortunate farm-lad, beforewhom in his old age all the great ones of the earth prostrated themselves in reverence,now saluted the vicar of st. peter with the same gestures of adoration. the coronationof the emperor, who had already been for six years on the throne, was celebrated with theutmost magnificence, the roman pontiff himself
placing the diadem on his head. then the popeand all the senators with tears besought the emperor that their embassy might be acceptablein his sight. in the private interviews which were held, the pope probably hinted to hisorthodox ally the dangers which might result to the catholic cause in italy, if theodoric,hitherto so tolerant a heretic, should be provoked to measures of retaliation on behalfof his church. there does seem to have been some modification of the persecuting edictsagainst the arians, and at least some restoration of churches to the heretics, though certainpapal historians, unwilling to admit that a pope can have pleaded for any concessionto misbelievers, endeavour to represent the pope's mission as fruitless, while the pope'sperson was greeted with enthusiastic reverence.
but that which is upon the whole our bestauthority declares that "the emperor justin having met the pope on his arrival as if hewere st. peter himself, and having heard his message, promised that he would comply withall his demands except that the converts who had given themselves to the catholic faithcould by no means be restored to the arians". this last exception does not seem an unreasonableone. surely theodoric could hardly have expected that justin would exert his imperial powerin order to force any of his subjects back into what he deemed a deadly heresy. but forsome cause or other, probably because he perceived the mistake which he had committed in givingto the world so striking a demonstration of the new alliance between emperor and pope,theodoric's ambassadors, on their return to
ravenna, found their master in a state ofwrath bordering on frenzy. all, both pope and senators, were cast into prison and theretreated with harshness and cruelty. the pope, who was probably an aged and delicate man,began to languish in his dungeon, and there he died on the 25th of may, 526. in the meantime, while the papal embassy hadbeen absent on its mission to constantinople, theodoric had perpetrated another crime underthe influence of his maddening suspicions. symmachus, father-in-law of boã«thius, thevenerable head of the senate, a man of saintly life and far advanced in years, had probablydared to show that he condemned as well as lamented the execution of his brilliant son-in-law.against him, therefore, a charge, doubtless
of treason, was brought by command of theking. to be accused was of course to be condemned, and symmachus was put to death in one of theprisons at ravenna. after the deaths of these three men, boã«thius,symmachus, and pope john, all chance of peace between theodoric and his subjects, and whatwas worse, all chance of peace between theodoric and his nobler and truer self was over, andthere was nothing left him but to die in misery and remorse. it was probably in these summerdays of 526 that (as before stated) he presented his young grandson athalaric to his faithfulgoths as their king. an edict was issued--and the faithful groaned when they saw that itbore the counter-signature of a jewish treasury-clerk--that on sunday the 30th of august all the catholicchurches of italy should be handed over to
the arians. but this tremendous religiousrevolution was not to be accomplished, nor was an insurrection of the catholics to berequired in order to arrest it. the edict was published on wednesday the 26th of august.on the following day the king was attacked by diarrå“a, and after three days of violentpain he died on the 30th of august, the very day on which the churches were to have beenhanded over to the heretics and ninety-seven days after the death of the pope. there is certainly something in this accountof theodoric's death which suggests the idea of arsenical poisoning. no hint of this kindis given by any of the annalists, but they are all hostile to theodoric and disposedto see in his rapid illness and most opportune
death a divine judgment for his meditatedpersecution of the church. on the other hand it is impossible to read the account of hisstrange incoherent deeds and words during the last three years of his life, withoutsuspecting that his brain was diseased and that he was not fully responsible for hisactions. as bearing on this question it is worth while to quote the story of his deathgiven by a greek historian who wrote twenty-four years after his death. it is, perhaps, onlyan idle tale, but it shows the kind of stories which were current among the citizens of ravennaas to the last days of their great king. "when theodoric was dining, a few days after thedeath of symmachus and boã«thius, the servants placed on the table a large fish's head. thisseemed to theodoric to be the head of symmachus,
newly slain. the teeth seemed to gnaw thelower lip, the eyes glared at him with wrath and frenzy, the dead man appeared, to threatenhim with utmost vengeance. terrified by this amazing portent and chilled to the bone withfear, he hastily sought his couch, where, having ordered the servants to pile bed-clothesupon him, he slept awhile. then sending for elpidius, the physician, he related all thathad happened to him, and wept for his sins against symmachus and boã«thius. and withthese tears and with bitter lamentations for the tragedy in which he had taken part, hesoon afterwards died, this being the first and last injustice which he had committedagainst any of his subjects. and it proceeded from his not carefully sifting, as he waswont to do, the evidence on which a capital
charge was grounded". this story of procopius, if it have any foundationat all, seems to show that theodoric's last days were passed in delirium, and might suggesta doubt whether in the heart-break of these later years he had not endeavoured to drownhis sorrows in wine. but it is interesting to see that the greek historian, though writingfrom a somewhat hostile point of view, recognises emphatically the justice of theodoric's ordinaryadministration, and considers the execution of symmachus and boã«thius (we ought to addthe imprisonment of the pope and his co-ambassadors) as the one tyrannical series of acts whichmarred the otherwise fair fame of a patriot-king. the tomb of theodoric still stands, a noblemonument of the art of the sixth century,
outside the walls of the north-east cornerof ravenna. this edifice, which belongs to the same class of sepulchral buildings asthe tomb of hadrian (now better known as the castle of s. angelo), is built of squaredmarble stones, and consists of two storeys, the lower one a decagon, the upper one circular.the roof is composed of one enormous block of istrian marble 33 feet in diameter, 3 feetin height, and weighing, it is said, nearly 300 tons. it is a marvel and a mystery how,with the comparatively rude engineering appliances of that age, so ponderous a mass can havebeen transported from such a distance and raised to such a height. at equal intervalsround the outside of this shallow, dome-like roof, twelve stone brackets are attached toit. they are now marked with the names of
eight apostles and of the four evangelists.one conjecture as to their destination is that they were originally crowned with statues,perhaps of these apostles and evangelists; another, to me not very probable, is, thatthe ropes used (if any were used) in lifting the mighty monolith to its place were passedthrough these, which would thus be the handles of the dome. this mausoleum, which is generally calledla rotonda by the citizens of ravenna, was used in the middle ages as the choir of thechurch of s. maria della rotonda, and divine service was celebrated in it by the monksof an adjoining monastery. it is now a "public monument" and there are few traces left ofits ecclesiastical employment. the basement,
as i have seen it, is often filled with water,exuding from the marshy soil: the upper storey is abandoned to gloom and silence. of theodoric himself, whose body, accordingto tradition, was once deposited in a porphyry vase in the upper storey of the mausoleum,there is now no vestige in the great pile which in his own life-time he raised as hisintended sepulchre. nor is this any recent spoliation. agnellus, bishop of ravenna, writingin the days of charlemagne, says that the body of theodoric was not in the mausoleum,and had been, as he thought, cast forth out of its sepulchre, and the wonderful porphyryvase in which it had been enclosed placed at the door of the neighbouring monastery.a recent enquirer has connected these somewhat
ambiguous words of agnellus with a childishstory told by pope gregory the great, who wrote some seventy years after the death oftheodoric. according to this story, a holy hermit, who lived in the island of lipari,on the day and hour of theodoric's death saw him, with bound hands and garments disarranged,dragged up the volcano of stromboli by his two victims symmachus and pope john, and hurledby them into the fire-vomiting crater. what more likely, it is suggested, than that themonks of the adjoining monastery should seize the opportunity of some crisis in the troubledhistory of ravenna to cast out the body of theodoric from its resting-place, and so,to the ignorant people, give point to pope gregory's edifying narrative as to the disposalof his soul?
a discovery, which was made some forty yearsago in the neighbourhood of ravenna, may possibly throw some light on these mysterious wordsof bishop agnellus: "as it seems to me, he was cast forth out of his sepulchre". in may,1854, the labourers employed in widening the bed of the canale corsini (now the only navigablewater-way between ravenna and the sea) came, at the depth of about five feet beneath thesea-level, on some tumuli, evidently sepulchral in their character, made of bricks laid edgeways.near one of these tumuli, but lying apart by itself, was a golden cuirass adorned withprecious stones. the rascally labourers, when they caught sight of their treasure, feignedto see nothing, promptly covered it up again, and returned at nightfall to divide the spoil.a little piece of gold which was found lying
on the ground caused enquiries to be set onfoot; the labourers were arrested, but unfortunately the greater part of the booty had alreadybeen cast into the melting-pot. a few pieces were, however, recovered, and are now in themuseum at ravenna, where they figure in the catalogue as part of the armour of odovacar.this is, however, a mere conjecture, and another, at least equally probable conjecture, is thatthe cuirass of gold once covered the breast of theodoric. the spot where it was foundis about one hundred and fifty yards from the rotonda, and if the monks had for anyreason decided to pillage the sepulchre of its precious deposit, this was a not improbableplace where they might hide it for a time. certainly the self-denial which they showedin not stripping the body of its costly covering
is somewhat surprising, but possibly the conspiratorswere few in number and the chances of war may have removed them, before they had anopportunity to disinter the body a second time and strip it of its cuirass, which moreovercould not have been easily disposed of without exciting suspicion. one little circumstance which seems somewhatto confirm this theory, is the fact that there is an enrichment running round the borderof the cuirass very similar in character to a decoration of the cornice in theodoric'stomb. whether this theory be correct or not, theindignity which was certainly at some time offered to the mortal remains of the greatostrogothic king reminds us of the similar
insults offered to the body of the great puritanprotector, cromwell, like theodoric, was carried to his grave with all the conventional demonstrationsof national mourning. he was dragged from it again and cast out "like an abominablebranch" when the legitimate monarchy was restored, when "church and king" were again in the ascendant,and when the stout soldiers, who had made him in all but the name king de facto, wereobliged to bow their heads beneath the recovered might of the king de jure. chapter xv.amalasuentha. our special subject, the life of theodoric,is ended, but so closely was the king identified with the people that the narration can hardlyclose without a sketch of the fortunes of
the ostrogothic nation during the generationwhich followed his death. i shall not attempt any detailed history of this period, but shalldraw merely its broadest outlines. notwithstanding the melancholy and apparentlythreatening circumstances which attended the death of theodoric, his descendants succeededto his power without a contest. in spain, his grandson, amalaric, who had probably bythis time attained his majority, was hailed as king of the visigoths. in italy, athalaric,now barely ten years old, became the nominal ruler, the real powers being exercised byhis widowed mother, amalasuentha, who was guided more implicitly than her father hadbeen by the counsel of cassiodorus, and availed herself of his fertile pen for the proclamationsin which she addressed the subjects of her
son. in writing to the roman senate, cassiodorusmade his child-sovereign enlarge on the felicity of the country in which the accession of anew ruler could take place without war or sedition or loss of any kind to the republic."on account of the unsurpassed glory of the amal race, the promise of my youth has beenpreferred to the merits of all others. the chiefs, glorious in council and in war, haveflocked to recognise me as king, so gladly that it seems like a divine inspiration, andthe kingdom has been changed as one changes a garment. the general consent of goths andromans has crowned one king, and they have confirmed their allegiance by an oath. you,though distant from my person, are as near to me in heart as they, and i therefore callon you to follow their example. we all know
that the most excellent fathers of the senatelove their king more fervently than other ranks of the state, in proportion to the greaterbenefits which they have received at his hand". to the senators, who had witnessed the denunciationof albinus, and who had been compelled with anguish of heart to vote the condemnationof boã«thius, this allusion to the great benefits which they had received from their gothicsovereign might seem almost like mockery: yet there can be little doubt that the senatedid hail the accession of athalaric with acclamations, and that amalasuentha's administration ofaffairs was popular with the roman inhabitants of italy. it might well be so, for this princess,born under an italian sky, and accustomed from her childhood to gaze upon the greatworks which rome had constructed for the embellishment
of the peninsula, was no goth at heart, butenthusiastically, even unwisely, roman. in religious matters we are almost surprisedto find that she adhered to the arian creed of her father and her husband, but all talkof persecution of the catholics ceased, and no more was heard of the enforced cessionof their churches to the arians. and in everything else but religion the sympathies of the newruler were entirely on the side of the subject, not the dominant, nationality. as it had beensaid of old that "captive greece subdued her conquerors", so now was it with subject italyand its gothic mistress. a diligent student of greek as well as of latin literature, ableto discourse with the ambassadors of constantinople in well-turned attic sentences, or to delivera stately latin oration to the messengers
of the senate, she could also, when the occasionrequired brevity, wrap herself in the robe of taciturnity which she inherited from herteutonic ancestors, and with few, diplomatically chosen words, make the hearer feel his immeasurableinferiority to the "lady of the kingdoms". a woman with a mind thus richly stored withthe literary treasure of greece and rome was likely to look with impatient scorn on thebarren and barbarous annals of her people. we in whose ears the notes of the teutonicminstrelsy of the middle ages are still sounding, we who know that shakespeare, milton, gå“thewere all one day to arise from beneath the soil of germanic literature, can hardly conceivehow dreary and repulsive the national sagas, and even the every-day speech of her people,would seem in that day to a woman of great
intellectual endowments, nor how strong wouldbe the antagonism between culture and national patriotism in the heart of a princess likeamalasuentha. thus the position of things during the reignof the young athalaric was strangely altered from that which had existed under his grandfather.the "king of the goths and romans" was under the sway of a mother who would make him virtually"king of the romans", only leaving the goths outside in moody isolation. of course everystep that amalasuentha, in the enthusiasm of her love for things roman, took towardsthe roman senate carried her farther from the traditions of her people, and lost herthe love of some stern old gothic warriors. and, moreover, with all her great intellectualendowments, it is clear that this highly cultivated,
statuesque, and stately woman had little skillin reading character, little power in estimating the force of human motives. she had read (wemay conjecture) virgil and sophocles, but she did not know what was in the heart ofa child, and she knew not how long a scoundrel will wait for his revenge. at the time that the gothic kingdom was thusbeing administered by a child and a woman, the roman empire, which had seemed effeteand decaying, was astonishing the world by its recovered and increasing vigour. sincethe death of theodosius (more than one hundred and thirty years before that of theodoric)no great historic name had illustrated the annals of the eastern empire, but now, a yearafter the accession of athalaric at ravenna,
the death of justin, in the palace at constantinople,(1st aug., 527) brought upon the scene an emperor who, whatever his faults, howeverdisastrous (as i hold it to have been) his influence on the general happiness of thehuman race, made for himself undoubtedly one of the very greatest names in the whole seriesfrom julius to palaeologus--the world-famous emperor justinian. with justinian's long wars on the easternfrontier of his empire we have here no concern. he was matched there against a terrible rival,chosroes nushirvan, and at most succeeded (and that not always) in upholding the bannerof europe against triumphant asia. his domestic affairs, his marriage with the actress theodora,the strange ascendancy which she exerted over
him through life, his magnificent buildings,the rebellion in constantinople (springing out of the factions of the hippodrome) whichhad all but hurled him from his throne,--these also are all beyond our province. so too ishis noblest title to immortality, the composition by his orders of that magnificent legal trilogy,the code, the digest, and the institutes, which summed up whatever was most worthy ofpreservation in the labours of roman lawyers for nine centuries in the past, and sent itforward for at least thirteen centuries into the future to ascertain the rights and tomould the institutions of men dwelling in lands of the very existence of which no roman,from the first julius to the last constantine, ever dreamed. justinian as legislator is asmuch out of our present focus as justinian
the antagonist of persia. but what we have here briefly to concern ourselveswith is that marvellous display of renewed energy by which the empire, under justinian,made its presence felt in western europe and africa. during the thirty-eight years of hisreign the great world-kingdom, which for five generations had been losing province afterprovince to the barbarians, and which, when she had once lost a game had seemed neverto have the heart to try her fortune again on the same battle-field, now sent out herfleets and her armies, apparently with the same confidence of success which had onceanimated her scipios and her sullas, again planted her victorious standards on the citadelof carthage, made the new carthage in spain,
malaga, and distant cadiz her own, and--whatconcerns our present subject more nearly--once more asserted the unrestricted dominion ofthe roman augustus over italy "from the alps to the sea". let us beware of thinking ofall these great changes as strange and precarious extensions of "the byzantine empire". to doso is to import the language of much later ages into the politics of the sixth century.however clearly we may now see that the relations thus established between constantinople andthe western shores of the mediterranean were artificial, and destined not to endure, tojustinian and his contemporaries these were not "conquests by constantinople", but "therecovery of africa, italy, and part of spain for the roman republic".
the first of the teutonic states to fall wasthe kingdom of the vandals. its ruin was certainly hastened by the estrangement between its royalhouse and that of the ostrogoths. we left theodoric's sister, the stately and somewhatdomineering amalafrida in prison at carthage. soon after her brother's death she was executedor murdered, by order of her cousin the catholic reformer, hilderic. this outrage was keenlyresented by the court of ravenna. hostilities between the two states were apparently imminent,but probably amalasuentha felt that war, whether successful or unsuccessful, would be too dangerousfor the dynasty, and sullen alienation took the place of the preparation of fleets andarmies. in june, 531, five years after the accession of athalaric, the elderly and effeminatehilderic was deposed by his martial subjects
who had long chafed under the rule of sucha sovereign, and his cousin, the warlike gelimer, ascended the throne. the deposition of hilderic,followed for the present not by his death but by his close imprisonment, furnished theambitious justinian with a fair pretext for war, since hilderic was not only the allyof the empire, and a catholic, but was descended on his mother's side from the great theodosiusand related to many of the byzantine nobility. in spite of the opposition of the more cautiousamong his counsellors, justinian decided to despatch an expedition for the conquest ofcarthage, and about midsummer, 533, a fleet of 500 ships, manned by 20,000 sailors andconveying 15,000 soldiers (10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry), sailed forth from thebosphorus into the sea of marmora, bound for
the libyan waters. at the head of the armywas belisarius, now about twenty-eight years of age, a man who came, like his imperialmaster, from the highlands of illyricum, but who, unlike that master, was probably of noblelineage. three years before, he had won the battle of daras, defeating the persian general,whose army was nearly twice as numerous as his own, and he had already shown signs ofthat profound knowledge of the science, and that wonderful mastery of the art of war whichhe was afterwards to display in many a hard-fought campaign, and which entitled him to a placein the innermost circle of the greatest generals that the world has seen. the voyage of the imperial fleet was slowand tedious, and had the vandal king been
well served by his ambassadors there was ampletime to have anticipated its attack. but gelimer seems to have been quite ignorant of the projectedexpedition, and had actually sent off some of his best troops under the command of hisbrother, tzazo, to suppress a rebellion which had broken out in sardinia. moreover, theestrangement between vandals and ostrogoths was a most fortunate event for the imperialcause. in consequence of that estrangement belisarius was able to land in sicily to refreshhis soldiers wearied with a long voyage, and to obtain accurate information as to the preparations,or rather no-preparations, of the enemy. early in september the army landed at thepromontory of caput-vada, about one hundred and thirty miles south-east of carthage, andbegan their march towards the capital. they
journeyed unopposed through friendly catholicvillages, and royal parks beautiful in verdure and abounding in luscious fruits, until, aftereleven days, they arrived at the tenth milestone from carthage, and here came the shock ofwar. gelimer had planned a combined attack on (13th sept., 533) the imperial army, byhimself, operating on their rear, and his brother ammatas making a vigorous sally fromcarthage and attacking them in front. if the two attacks had been really simultaneous,it might have gone hardly with the imperial army; but ammatas came too soon to the field,was defeated and slain. gelimer arriving later on in the day inflicted a partial defeat onthe troops of belisarius, but, coming to the spot where lay the dead body of his brother,he stayed so long to bewail and to bury him
that belisarius had time to rally his forcesand to convert defeat into victory. gelimer fled to the open country. belisarius pressedon and without further opposition entered the gates of carthage, where he was receivedby the majority of the citizens, who spoke the latin tongue, and professed the catholicfaith, with unconcealed rejoicing. some roman merchants who had been confined for many weeksin the dungeon were (15th sept., 533) liberated by their anxious gaoler. but the imperialvictory came too late for the captive hilderic, as he had been already put to death in prisonby order of his successor. there was thus neither friend nor foe left to bar justinian'sclaim to rule as augustus over africa. belisarius was accompanied in this, as inmany subsequent expeditions, by his secretary
and counsellor, the rhetorician procopius,who has written the story of their wars in a style worthy of his hero-chief. he describesthe sensations of surprise at their own good fortune, with which belisarius and his suitefound themselves at noon of the 15 th september, sitting in gelimer's gorgeous banquet-hall,served by the vandal's lackeys and partaking of the sumptuous repast which he had orderedto be prepared in celebration of his anticipated victory. at this point procopius indulgesin a strain of meditation which is not unusual with him: "we may see hereby how fortune wantonsin her pride, how she teaches us that she is mistress of all things, and that she willnot suffer man to have anything which he can call his own".
though carthage was taken, the war was notyet over. tzazo, who, in the midst of his victories in sardinia, heard of the ruin ofhis country, hastened home with a valiant and hitherto triumphant army, and joined hisbrother, gelimer, on the plain of bulla, in numidia. when the two brothers met they claspedone another round the neck and for long could not loosen their hold, yet could they speakno word to each other, but wrung their hands and wept; and so did each one of the companionsof gelimer with some one of the officers of the army of sardinia. but tears soon gaveplace to the longing for revenge, and the two armies, forming one strong and determinedhost, moved eastward to tricamaron, about twenty miles distant from carthage, and begana partial blockade of the capital. on the
15 th december belisarius met the vandalsin battle-array. the fight was more stubbornly contested than that of ad decimum; but tzazofell in the thickest of the battle, and again the impulsive nature of gelimer was so movedby the sight of a brother's blood that he renounced the struggle for his crown and gallopedaway from the field. now the conquest of africa was indeed completed,but belisarius was set upon capturing the person of the fugitive king, as an ornamentto his triumph and the pledge of victory. the tedious task was delegated to a teutonicchief named pharas, who for three months beleaguered the impregnable hill on the confines of mauritania,on the summit of which was the fortress in which gelimer had taken refuge. the incidentswhich marked his final surrender have been
often described. he who had been of late thedaintily-living lord of africa found life hard indeed among the rough, half-savage moors,who were partly his body-guard and partly his gaolers. an ambassador sent by pharasto exhort him to surrender and cast himself on the clemency of justinian brought backhis proud refusal to submit to one who had done him so much undeserved wrong, but broughtback also a pathetic request that his courteous foe would grant him three things, a lyre,a sponge, and a loaf of bread. the loaf was to remind him of the taste of baked bread,which he had not eaten for months; the sponge was to bathe his eyes, weakened with continualtears; the lyre, to enable him to set to music an ode which he had composed on the subjectof his misfortunes. a few days more passed
by, and then came gelimer's offer to surrenderat discretion, trusting to the generosity of the emperor. what finally broke down hisproud spirit was the sight of a delicately nurtured child, the son of one of his vandalcourtiers, fighting with a dirty little moor for a half-baked piece of dough, which thetwo boys had pulled out of the ashes where it was baking. gelimer, whose reason was perhaps somewhatunhinged by his hardships, gave a loud laugh--professedly at the instability of human greatness--whenbrought into the presence of belisarius. he and his captors soon embarked for constantinople,where they arrived probably about the middle of 534. it had thus taken less than a yearto level with the ground the whole fabric
of vandal dominion, reared a century beforeby the terrible gaiseric, and to reunite africa to the roman republic. belisarius receiveda splendid triumph, the chief figure of which was of course the captive gelimer, who, witha purple robe on his shoulders, paced through the streets, shouting ever and anon in a melancholyvoice, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity". when the procession reached the palace, gelimerby constraint and belisarius willingly prostrated themselves at the feet of "justinianus augustus".the promises on the faith of which the vandal king had surrendered himself were well kept.he might have been raised to the dignity of patrician, if he would have renounced hisarian creed. as it was, he lived in honourable exile on the large estates in galatia, whichhe had received from the bounty of the emperor.
in the same year (534) which witnessed thetriumph of belisarius over the conquered vandals came the final overthrow of the burgundianmonarchy. in 523 sigismund, the son-in-law of theodoric, the convert to catholicism whoordered the murder of his son, had been defeated in battle by the sons of clovis, and togetherwith his wife and two sons had been thrown down a deep well and so slain. theodoric,incensed at the murder of his grandson, had taken part against sigismund and obtaineda large accession of territory in dauphinã© as the price of his alliance with the franks.but a brother of sigismund's, named godamir, rallied the beaten burgundians, defeated thefranks in a battle in which one of their kings was slain, and succeeded in maintaining foreleven years longer the independence of his
nation. in the year 532, however, the frankishkings again entered the valley of the rhone with their desolating hosts, and in 534 theycompleted its conquest and added it to the great unwieldy monarchy over which they ruledin a kind of family partnership. in spain too the frankish kings had achievedsome successes, and at the cost of a descendant of theodoric. amalaric, king of the visigoths,had married, probably after his grandfather's death, clotilda, daughter of clovis, and fora time seems to have pursued a tolerant policy towards the catholics, but gradually driftedinto a position of unreasoning and barbarous hostility towards them, hostility from whichhis own wife was not exempted. he caused filth to be cast at the devout clotilda, when shewas on her way to the catholic basilica, nay,
he even lifted his hand to strike her. thecowardly blow brought blood, and the drops of this blood, royal and frankish, collectedon a handkerchief and sent northward over the pyrenees, brought the two brother-kingsof the franks into spain (431). amalaric was defeated, fled to barcelona, and sought toescape thence by sea, probably to italy; but his passage to the harbour was barred by hisown mutinous soldiers, and he perished by a javelin hurled by one of them. the franksreturned, enriched with great booty, to their own land, and theudis, the ostrogothic noble,whose power had long overshadowed his master's, and who was accused by some of having causedthe mutiny of his troops, succeeded to his throne.
so had the great arian league and the networkof family alliances, by which theodoric had sought to guard it from the spoiler, passedaway into nothingness: and thus did the ostrogothic kingdom now stand alone and without alliesbefore the rejuvenated empire, flushed with victory, and possessing such a head as justinian,such a terrible right arm as belisarius. not many months had elapsed from the battle oftricamaron when the ambassadors of the empire appeared at ravenna to present those claimsout of which greek ingenuity would soon fashion a pretext for war. the town of lilybã¦um,in sicily had long ago been handed over by theodoric to the vandal king thrasamund aspart of amalafrida's dowry. apparently it had been recaptured by the goths after thedeath of the vandal queen, but justinian urged
that it was still the rightful possessionof gelimer, and therefore of himself, who now by the fortune of war was gelimer's master.then there were certain huns, deserters from the emperor's service, who had been allowedby the governor of naples to enlist in the gothic army. a gothic general who had to conductsome warlike operations near sirmium had crossed the danube and sacked gratiana, a city inmå“sia. all these grievances were rehearsed by the imperial ambassador, who hinted, notobscurely, that war would follow if they were not redressed. in fact, however, the real object of the embassywhich came with this formal statement of grievances was to discuss a strange proposition whichhad been made by amalasuentha, one for the
understanding of which we must go back a fewyears (we are not told exactly how many) to an event which illustrates the manner in whichthe gothic princess conducted the education of her son. she wished, we are told, to havehim brought up in all respects after the manner of the romans, and forced him every day togo to the house of a grammarian to learn his lessons. moreover, she chose out three gothicancients, men of wisdom and of calm, reasonable temperament, and assigned these venerablepersons to athalaric as his constant companions. this manner of training the kingly boy didnot at all suit the ideas of the goths, the roman historian says, "because they wishedhim to be trained in more barbaric style in order that they might have the more libertyfor oppressing their subjects": a modern historian
may suggest, "because they remembered theirown childhood and knew what was in the heart of a boy", of which amalasuentha, who wasevidently elderly and wise in her cradle, had no conception. one day, for some childishoffence, the young king was slapped in the face by his mother, and thereupon, in a tempestof passionate tears, he burst out of the women's apartments and appeared sobbing in the men'shall of audience. all gothic hearts were stirred when they saw the princely amal thus mishandled,and the warriors began to hint the insulting suspicion that amalasuentha wished to educateher child into his grave, that she might marry again and make her new husband king of thegoths and romans. the nobles of the nation were gathered together, and seeking an audiencewith the princess, their spokesman thus addressed
her: "o lady, you are not dealing justly byus, nor doing that which is expedient for the nation, in your way of educating yourson. letters and book-learning are very different from manly courage and fortitude, and to handa lad over to the teaching of greybeards is generally the way to make him a coward anda caitiff. he who is to do daring deeds and win glory in the world must be emancipatedfrom fear of the pedagogue and be practising martial exercises. your father theodoric wouldnever suffer his goths to send their sons to the grammarian-school, for he used to say:'if they fear their teacher's strap now they will never look on sword or javelin withouta shudder.' and he himself, who won the lordship of such wide lands, and died king of so faira kingdom which he had not inherited from
his fathers, knew nothing even by hearsayof this book-learning. therefore, lady, you must say 'good-bye' to these pedagogues, andgive athalaric companions of his own age, who may grow up with him to manhood and makeof him a valiant king after the pattern of the barbarians". amalasuentha listened with outward calmnessto this harangue, and though filled with secret indignation recognised the people's voiceto which she was forced to bow. the meek old men were removed from athalaric's bed-chamber;he was released from his daily attendance on the grammarian; and some young gothic nobleswere assigned to him as associates. but the rebound was too sudden. his barbarian comradesled astray the young king's heart after wine
and women. his health began to be underminedby his excesses, and the surly ill-nature which he manifested towards his mother wasa sure indication of the defenceless position in which she would find herself as soon asher son should assume the reins of government. feeling these reins slipping from her grasp,she opened secret negotiations with justinian to assure herself of his protection in caseshe should be driven from italy by rebellion. but in the meantime she singled out threeof the gothic nobles who had been prominent in the revolt against her authority and sentthem, on one pretext or another connected with the defence of the realm, to widely separatedtowns on the extreme borders of italy. though severed, they still found means to hold mutualcommunications and to plot the downfall of
the princess. informed of this conspiracy,she freighted a vessel with forty thousand pounds' weight of gold (â£1,6000,000) andsent it to dyrrhachium, on the eastern shore of the adriatic, to await her further orders.if things should go ill with her she would thus, in any event, have a line of retreatopened towards constantinople and a comfortable subsistence assured to her in that capital.having taken these precautions, she gave a commission to some of her bravest and mostdevoted followers (for she evidently had a strong party in her favour) to seek out thethree disaffected nobles in their various places of banishment and put them to death.her henchmen obeyed her bidding; no popular tumult was excited; the sceptre seemed tobe more firmly than ever grasped by the hand
of the princess; the ship, without havingdischarged its cargo, was ordered back from dyrrhachium, and there came a slight lullin the underground negotiations with constantinople. but another candidate for the favours of justinianwas also appearing in the royal family of the goths. theodahad, son of amalfrida, andtherefore nephew of theodoric, was a man now pretty far advanced in middle life. he hadreceived in his boyhood that literary and rhetorical training which amalasuentha yearnedto bestow on her son; he was well versed in the works of the roman orators and could discourselearnedly on the dialogues of plato. unhappily, this varnish of intellectual culture covereda thoroughly vile and rotten character. he was averse to all the warlike employmentsof his forefathers, but his whole heart was
set on robbery, under the form of civilisation,by means of extortion and chicane. he had received from his uncle ample estates in thefertile province of tuscany, but he was one who, as the common people said, "could notendure a neighbour", and, on one pretence or other, he was perpetually adding farm afterfarm and villa after villa to his enormous property. already during his uncle's reignthe grave pen of cassiodorus had been twice employed to censure theodahad's avarice, "avulgar vice, which the kinsman of the king and a man of amal blood is especially boundto avoid", and to complain that "you, who should have shown an example of glorious moderation,have caused the scandal of high-handed spoliation". after theodoric's death the process of unjustaccumulation went on rapidly. from every part
of tuscany the cry went up that the provincialswere being oppressed and their lands taken from them on no pretext whatever; and thecounts of the royal patrimony had to complain that even the king's domain was sufferingfrom theodahad's depredations. he was summoned to the comitatus or king's court, at ravenna;his various acts of alleged spoliation were inquired into; their injustice was clearlyproved, and he was compelled by amalasuentha to restore the wrongfully appropriated lands. it was perhaps before this process was actuallybegun, but after theodahad was made aware that the clamour against him was growing louderand had reached the ears of his cousin, that he sought an interview with the bishops ofephesus and philippi, who had come over to
italy on some ecclesiastical errand from theemperor to the pope. to these clerical ambassadors theodahad made the extraordinary proposalthat justinian should buy of him the province of tuscany for a certain large sum of money,to which was to be added the dignity of a senator of constantinople. if this negotiationcould be carried through, the diligent student of plato and cicero proposed to end his daysin dignified retirement at the eastern capital. we may now return to the palace of ravennaand be present at the audience granted, probably in the summer of 534, by amalasuentha to alexander,the ambassador of justinian. to the demands for the surrender of lilybã¦um and the complaintsas to the enlistment of hunnish deserters, amalasuentha made, in public, a suitable andsprited reply: "it was not the part of a great
and courageous monarch to pick a quarrel withan orphaned king, too young to be accurately informed of what was going on in all partsof his dominions, about such paltry matters as the possession of lilybã¦um, a barren andworthless rock of sicily, about ten wild huns who had sought refuge in italy, and aboutthe offence which the gothic soldiers had, in their ignorance, committed against a friendlycity in må“sia. justinian should look at the other side of the account, should rememberthe aid and comfort which his soldiers, on their expedition against the vandals, hadreceived from the friendly ostrogoths in sicily, and should ask himself whether without thataid he would ever have recovered possession of africa. if lilybã¦um did belong by rightto the emperor it was not too great a reward
for him to bestow on his young ally for suchopportune assistance". this was publicly the answer of amalasuentha--abold and determined refusal to surrender the rock of lilybã¦um. in her private interviewwith the ambassador, she assured him that she was ready to fulfil her compact and tomake arrangements for the transfer to the emperor of the whole of italy. when the two sets of ambassadors, civil andecclesiastical, returned to constantinople the emperor perceived that here were two negotiationsto be carried on of the most delicate kind and requiring the presence of a master ofdiplomacy. he accordingly despatched to ravenna a rhetorician named peter, a man of considerableintellectual endowments--he was a historian
as well as an orator--and one who had, eighteenyears before, held the high office of consul. but it was apparently winter before peterstarted on his journey, and when he arrived at aulon (now valona), just opposite brindisi,he heard such startling tidings as to the events which had occurred on the italian sideof the adriatic, that he waited there and asked for further instructions from his masteras to the course which he was to pursue in the existing position of affairs. (2nd oct.,534.) first of all came the death of the unhappylad, athalaric, in his eighteenth year, the victim of unwise strictness, followed by unwiselicence, and of the barbarian's passion for swinish and sensual pleasures. when her sonwas dead, amalasuentha, who had an instinctive
feeling that the goths would never submitto undisguised female sovereignty, took a strange and desperate resolution. she sentfor theodahad, now the only surviving male of the stock of theodoric, and, fashioningher lips to a smile, began to apologise for the humiliating sentence which had issuedagainst him from the king's court. "she had known all along", she said, "that her boywould die, and as he, theodahad, would then be the one hope of theodoric's line, she hadwished to abate his unpopularity and set him straight with his future subjects by strictlyenforcing their rights against him. now all that was over: his record was clear and shewas ready to invite him to become the partner of her throne; but he must first swear themost solemn oaths that he would be satisfied
with the name of royalty and that the actualpower should remain, as it had done for nine years, in the hands of amalasuentha". theodahad cheerfully swore tremendous oathsto the observance of this compact. proclamations in the name of the two new sovereigns wereput forth to all the goths and italians. in them theodahad grovelled in admiration ofthe wisdom, the virtue, the eloquence of the noble lady who had raised him to so high astation and who had done him the inestimable favour of making him feel her justice beforeshe bestowed upon him her grace. few weeks, however, passed, before amalasuentha was aprisoner, hurried away to a little lonely island in the lake of bolsena in tuscany byorder of the partner of her throne. having
taken this step, theodahad began with cravenapologies to excuse it to the eastern cã¦sar. "he had done no harm to amalasuentha; he woulddo no harm to her, though she had been guilty of the most nefarious designs against him:he only sought to protect her from the vengeance of the kinsmen of the three gothic nobleswhom she had murdered". an embassy composed of roman senators was ordered to carry thistale to justinian and to confirm it by a letter which, under duresse, had been wrung fromthe unfortunate princess in her prison. when the ambassadors arrived at constantinopleone of them spoke the words of the part which had been set down for him and declared thattheodahad had done nothing against amalasuentha of which any reasonable complaint could bemade; but the others, headed by the brave
liberius, "a man of singularly high and noblenature, and of the most watchful regard to truth", told the whole story exactly as ithad happened to the emperor. the result was a despatch to the ambassador peter enjoininghim to find means of assuring amalasuentha that justinian would exert all his influencefor her safety, and to inform theodahad publicly, in presence of all his counsellors, that itwas at his own peril that he would touch a hair of the head of the gothic queen. scarcely, however, had peter touched the italianshore--he had not conveyed a letter to the prison nor uttered a word in the palace--whenthe sad tragedy was ended. the relations of the three nobles, who had "blood-feud" withthe queen, and who were perhaps, according
to the code of barbarian morality, justifiedin avenging their death, made their way to amalasuentha's island prison, and there, inthat desolate abode, the daughter of theodoric met her death at their hands, dying with allthat stately dignity and cold self-possession with which she had lived. justinian's ambassador at once proceeded tothe king's court, and there, in the presence of all the gothic nobles, denounced the fouldeed which they had permitted to be done, and declared that for this there must be "trucelesswar" between the emperor and them. theodahad, as stupid as he was vile, renewed his ridiculousprotestations that he had no part in the violence done to amalasuentha, but had heard of itwith the utmost regret, and this although
he had already rewarded the murderers withsignal tokens of his favour. thus, by the folly of the wise and the criminalaudacity of the coward, had a train been laid for the destruction of the ostrogothic kingdom.all the petty pretexts for war, the affair of lilybã¦um, the hunnish deserters, the sackof gratiana, faded into insignificance before this new and most righteous cause of quarrel.if hilderic's deposition had been avenged by the capture of carthage, with far morejustice might the death of the noble amalasuentha be avenged by the capture of ravenna and ofrome. in the great war which was soon to burst upon italy justinian could figure not onlyas the protector of the provincials, not only as the defender of the catholics, but as theavenger of the blood of the daughter of theodoric.
chapter xvi.belisarius. the emperor's preparations for the gothicwar were soon made, and in the summer of 535 two armies were sent forth from constantinople,one destined to act on the east and the other on the west of the adriatic. when we thinkof the mighty armaments by means of which pompey and cã¦sar, or even licinius and constantine,had contended for the mastery of the roman world, the forces entrusted to the generalsof justinian seem strangely small. we are not informed of the precise number of thearmy sent to dalmatia, but the whole tenor of the narrative leads us to infer that itconsisted of not more than 3,000 or 4,000 men. it fought with varying fortunes but withultimate success. salona, the dalmatian capital,
was taken by the imperial army, wrested fromthem by the goths, retaken by the imperialists. the imperial general, a brave old barbariannamed mundus, fell dead by the side of his slaughtered son; but another general tookhis place, and being well supported by a naval expedition, succeeded, as has been said, inreconquering salona, drove out the gothic generals, and reincorporated dalmatia withthe empire. this province, which had for many generations been treated almost as a partof italy, was now for four centuries to be for the most part a dependency of constantinople.the dalmatian war was ended by the middle of 536. but it was of course to the italian expeditionthat the eyes of the spectators of the great
drama were most eagerly turned. here belisariuscommanded, peerless among the generals of his own age, and not surpassed by many ofpreceding or following ages. the force under his command consisted of only 7,500 men, thegreater part of whom were of barbarian origin--huns, moors, isaurians, gepidse, heruli, but theywere welded together by that instinct of military discipline and that unbounded admiration fortheir great commander and confidence in his success which is the surest herald of victory.not only in nationality but in mode of fighting they were utterly unlike the armies with whichrepublican rome had won the sovereignty of the world. in those days it might have beentruly said to the inhabitant of the seven-hilled city as macaulay has imagined capys sayingto romulus:
"thine, romanis the pilum: romanthe sword is thine. the even trench, the bristling mound, the legion's ordered line"-- but now, centuries of fighting with barbarianfoes, especially with the nimble squadrons of persia, had completely changed the characterof the imperial tactics. it was to the deadly aim of his hippo-toxotai (mounted bowmen)that belisarius, in pondering over his victories, ascribed his antonishing success. "he saidthat at the beginning of his first great battle he had carefully studied the characteristicdifferences of each army, in order that he
might prevent his little band from being overborneby sheer force of numbers. the chief difference which he noted was that almost all the roman(imperialist) soldiers and their hunnish allies were good hippo-toxotai, while the goths hadnone of them practised the art of shooting on horseback. their cavalry fought only withjavelins and swords, and their archers fought on foot covered by the horsemen. thus tillthe battle became a hand-to-hand encounter the horsemen could make no reply to the arrowsdischarged at them from a distance, and were therefore easily thrown into disorder, whilethe foot-soldiers, though able to reply to the enemy's archers, could not stand againstthe charges of his horse". from this passage we can see what were the means by which belisariuswon his great victories. while the goth, with
his huge broadsword and great javelin, chafingfor a hand-to-hand encounter with the foe, found himself mowed down by the arrows ofa distant enemy, the nimble barbarian who called himself a roman solder discharged hisarrows at the cavalry, dashed in impetuous onset against the infantry, wheeled round,feigned flight, sent his arrows against the too eagerly advancing horsemen, in fact, byparthian tactics won a roman victory, or to use a more modern illustration, the hippo-toxotaiwere the "mounted rifles" of the imperial the expedition under the command of belisariusmade its first attack on the gothic kingdom in sicily. here the campaign was little morethan a triumphant progress. in reliance on its professions of loyalty, theodoric andhis successors had left the wealthy and prosperous
island almost bare of gothic troops, and nowthe provincials, eager to form once more a part of the eternal roman empire, opened thegates of city after city to the troops of justinian; only at palermo was a stout resistancemade by the gothic soldiers who garrisoned the city. the walls were strong, and thatpart of them which bordered on the harbour was thought to be so high and massive as notto need the defence of soldiers. when unobserved by the foe, belisarius hoisted up his men,seated in boats, to the yard-arms of his ships and made them clamber out of the boats onto the unguarded parapet. this daring manå“uvre gave him the complete command of the gothicposition, and the garrison capitulated without delay. so was the whole island of sicily wonover to the realm of justinian before the
end of 535, and belisarius, consul for theyear, rode through the streets of syracuse on the last day of his term of office, scatteringhis "donative" to the shouting soldiers and citizens. operations in 536, the second year of thewar, were suspended for some months by a military mutiny at carthage, which called for the presenceof belisarius in africa. but the mutineers quailed before the very name of their latecommander. carthage was delivered from the siege wherewith they were closely pressingit, a battle was won in the open field, and the rebellion though not yet finally crushedwas sufficiently weakened for belisarius to return to sicily in the late spring of 536.he crossed the straits of messina, landed
in italy, was received by the provincialsof bruttii and lucania with open arms, and met with no check to his progress till, probablyin the early days of june, he stood with his army under the walls of the little town ofneapolis, which in our own days is represented by a successor ten times as large, the superblysituated city of naples. here a strong gothic garrison held the place for theodahad andprevented the surrender which many of the citizens, especially those of the poorer class,would gladly have made. an orator, who was sent by the neapolitans to plead their causein the general's camp, vainly endeavoured to persuade belisarius to march forward torome, leaving the fate of, naples to be decided under the walls of the capital. the imperialgeneral could not leave so strong a place
untaken in his rear, and though himself anxiousenough to meet theodahad, commenced the siege of the city. his land army was supported bythe fleet which was anchored in the harbour, yet the operations of the siege languished,and after twenty days belisarius seemed to be no nearer winning the prize of war thanon the first day. but just then one of his soldiers, a brave and active isaurian mountaineer,reported that he had found a means of entering the empty aqueduct through which, till belisariussevered the communication, water had been supplied to the city. the passage was narrow,and at one point the rock had to be filed away to allow the soldiers to pass, but allthis was done without arousing the suspicions of the besieged, and one night belisariussent six hundred soldiers, headed by the isaurian,
into the aqueduct, having arranged with themthe precise portion of the walls to which they were to rush as soon as they emergedinto the city. the daring attempt succeeded. the soldiers found themselves in a large cavernwith a narrow opening at the top, on the brink of which was a cottage. some of the most activeamong them swarmed up the sides of the cave, found the cottage inhabited by one old womanwho was easily frightened into silence, and let down a stout leather thong which theyfastened to the stem of an olive-tree, and by which all their comrades mounted. theyrushed to that part of the walls beneath which belisarius was standing, blew their trumpets,and assisted the besiegers to ascend. the gothic garrison were taken prisoners and treatedhonourably by belisarius. the city suffered
some of the usual horrors of a sack from thewild hunnish soldiers of the empire, but these were somewhat mitigated, and the citizenswho had been taken prisoners were restored to liberty, in compliance with the earnestentreaties of belisarius. the fall of neapolis, to whose assistanceno gothic army had marched, and the unhindered conquest of southern italy crowned the alreadytowering edifice of theodahad's unpopularity. it is not likely that this selfish and unwarlikepedant--a "nithing", as they probably called him--had ever been aught but a most unwelcomenecessity to the lion-hearted ostrogoths, and for all but the families and friends ofthe three slain noblemen, the imprisonment and the permitted murder of his benefactressmust have deepened dislike into horror. his
dishonest intrigues with constantinople wereknown to many, intrigues in which even after amalasuentha's death he still offered himselfand his crown for sale to the emperor, and the emperor, notwithstanding his brave wordsabout a truceless war, seemed willing to pay the caitiff his price. some gleams of successwhich shone upon the gothic arms in dalmatia towards the end of 535 filled the feeble soulof theodahad with presumptuous hope, and he broke off with arrogant faithlessness thenegotiations which he had begun. still, with all the gallant men under him longing to beemployed, he struck not one blow for his crown and country, but shut himself up in his palace,seeking by the silliest auguries to ascertain the issue of the war. the most notable ofthese vaticinations was "the augury of the
hogs", which he practised by the advice ofa certain jewish magician. he shut up in separate pens three batches of hogs, each batch consistingof ten. one batch was labelled "romans" (meaning the latin-speaking inhabitants of italy),another "goths", and the third "soldiers of the emperor". they were all left for a certainnumber of days without food, and when the appointed day was come, and the pens wereopened, all the "gothic" hogs but two were found dead. the "emperor's soldiers", withvery few exceptions, were living; of the "romans" half only were alive, and all had lost theirbristles. ridiculous as the manner of divination was, it furnished no inapt type of the miserieswhich the gothic war was to bring upon all concerned in it, and not least upon that latinpopulation which was still so keen to open
its gates to belisarius. but, as i have said, when neapolis had fallen,the brave gothic warriors felt that they had submitted too long to the rule of a dastardlike theodahad. they met in arms, a nation-parliament, on the plain of regeta, about forty-threemiles from rome in the direction of terracina. here there was plenty of grass for the pastureof their horses, and here, while the steeds grazed, the dismounted riders could deliberateas to the fortunes of the state. there was found to be an unanimous determination thatiheodahad should be dethroned, and, instead of him, they raised on the shield, witigis,a man somewhat past middle age, not of noble birth, who had distinguished himself by hisdeeds of valour thirty years before in the
war of sirmium. as soon as theodahad heardthe tidings of his deposition, he sought to escape with all speed to ravenna. the newking ordered a goth named optaris to pursue him and bring him back alive or dead. optarishad his own wrongs to avenge, for he had lost a rich and beautiful bride through theodahad'spurchased interference on behalf of another suitor. he followed him day and night, cameup with him while still on the road, "made him lie down on the pavement, and cut histhroat as a priest cuts the throat of a victim". so did theodahad perish, one of the meanestinsects that ever crawled across the page of history. witigis, the new king of the goths, had personalcourage and some experience of battles, but
he was no statesman and, as the event proved,no general. by his advice, the goths committed the astounding blunder of abandoning romeand concentrating their forces for defence in the north of italy. it is true that a garrisonof four thousand goths was left in the city under the command of the brave veteran leudaris,but, unsupported by any army in the field, this body of men was too small to hold sovast a city unless they were aided by the inhabitants. as for witigis, he marched northwardto ravenna with the bulk of the gothic army and there celebrated, not a victory, but amarriage. the only remaining scion of the race of theodoric was a young girl named matasuentha,the sister of athalaric. in some vain hope of consolidating his dynasty, witigis divorcedhis wife and married this young princess.
the marriage was, as might have been expected,an unhappy one. matasuentha shared the romanising tendencies of her mother, and her spirit revoltedagainst the alleged reasons of state which gave her this elderly and low-born barbarianfor a husband. in the darkest hour of the gothic fortunes (540) matasuentha was suspectedof opening secret negotiations with the imperial leaders, and even of seeking to aid the progressof their arms by crime. by the end of november, 536, belisarius, partlyaided by the treachery of the gothic general who commanded in samnium, had recovered forthe empire all that part of the italian peninsula which, till lately, formed the kingdom ofnaples. pope silverius, though he had sworn under duresse an oath of fealty to king witigis,sent messengers offering to surrender the
eternal city, and the four thousand goths,learning what negotiations were going forward, came to the conclusion that it was hopelessfor them to attempt to defend the city against such a general as belisarius and against thedeclared wish of the citizens. they accordingly marched out of rome by a northern gate asbelisarius entered it on the south. the brave old leudaris, refusing to abandon his trust,was taken prisoner, and sent, together with the keys of the city, to justinian, most undoubtedevidences of victory. belisarius took up his headquarters in thepincian palace (on that hill at the north of the city which is now the fashionable promenadeof the roman aristocracy), and from thence commanded a wide outlook over that part ofthe campagna on which, as he knew, a besieging
army would shortly encamp. he set to workwith all speed to repair the walls of the city, which had been first erected by aurelianand afterwards repaired by honorius at dates respectively 260 and 130 years before theentry of belisarius. time and barbarian sieges had wrought much havoc on the line of defence,the work of repair had to be done in haste, and to this day some archaeologists thinkthat it is possible to recognise the parts repaired by belisarius through the rough styleof the work and the heterogeneous nature of the materials employed in it. all throughthe winter months his ships were constantly arriving with cargoes of corn from sicily,which were safely stored away in the great state-warehouses. these preparations wereviewed with dismay by the citizens, who had
fondly imagined that their troubles were overwhen the gothic soldiers marched forth by the porta flaminia; that any fighting whichmight follow would take place on some distant field, and that they would have nothing todo but calmly to await the issue of the combat. this, however, was by no means the general'sidea of the right way of playing the game. he knew that the goths immensely outnumberedhis forces; he knew also that they were of old bad besiegers of cities, the work of siegerequiring a degree of patience and scientific skill to which the barbarian nature couldnot attain; and his plan was to wear them down by compelling them to undertake a longand wearisome blockade before he tried conclusions with them in the open field. if the romanclergy and people had known that this was
in his thoughts, they would probably not havebeen so ready to welcome the eagles of the emperor into their city. some hint of the growing disaffection of theroman people was carried to ravenna and quickened the impatience of witigis, who was now eagerto retrieve the blunder which he had committed in the evacuation of rome. he marched southwardwith a large army, which is represented to us as consisting of 150,000 men, and in theearly days of march he was already at the other end of the milvian bridge, about twomiles from rome. belisarius had meant to dispute the passage of the tiber at this point. thefort on the tuscan side of the river was garrisoned, and a large body of soldiers was encampedon the roman side; but when the garrison of
the fort saw the vast multitude of the enemy,who at sunset pitched their tents upon the plain, they despaired of making a successfulresistance, and abandoning the fort under cover of the night, skulked off into the countrydistricts of latium. thus one point of the game was thrown away. next morning the gothsfinding their passage unopposed, marched quietly over the bridge and fell upon the roman camp.a desperate battle followed, in which belisarius, exposing himself more than a general shouldhave done, did great deeds of valour. he was mounted on a noble steed, dark roan, witha white star on its forehead, which the barbarians, from that mark on its brow, called "balan".some imperial soldiers who had deserted to the enemy knew the steed and his rider, andshouted to their comrades to aim all their
darts at balan. so the cry "balan!" "balan!"resounded through the gothic ranks, and though only imperfectly understood by many of theutterers, had the effect of concentrating the fight round belisarius and the dark-roansteed. the general was nobly protected by the picked troops which formed his guard.they fell by scores around him, but he himself, desperately fighting, received never a wound,though a thousand of the noblest goths lay dead in the narrow space of ground where thishomeric combat had been going forward. the imperialists not merely withstood the gothiconset, but drove their opponents back to their camp, which had been already erected on theroman bank of the tiber. fresh troops, especially of cavalry, issuing forth from thence turnedthe tide of battle, and, overborne by irresistible
numbers, belisarius and his soldiers weresoon in full flight towards rome. when they arrived under the walls, with the barbariansso close behind them that they seemed to form one raging multitude, they found the gatesclosed against them by the panic-stricken garrison. even belisarius in vain shoutedhis orders to open the gates; in his gory face and dust-stained figure the defendersdid not recognise their brilliant leader. a halt was called, a desperate charge wasmade upon the pursuing goths, who were already beginning to pour down into the fosse; theywere pushed back some distance, not far, but far enough to enable the imperialists to reformtheir ranks, to make the presence of the general known to the defenders on the walls, to havethe gates opened, and in some sort of military
order to enter the city. thus the sun seton rome beleaguered, the barbarians outside the city. belisarius with his gallant bandof soldiers thinned but not disheartened by the struggle, within its walls, and the citizens-- "with terror dumb, or whispering with white lips, 'the foe, theycome, they come!" of the great siege of rome, which began onthat day, early in march, 537, and lasted a year and nine days, till march, 538, a siegeperhaps the most memorable of all that "roma ã†terna" has seen and has groaned under, aspart of the penalty of her undying greatness, it will be impossible here to give even ameagre outline. the events of those wonderful
374 days are chronicled almost with the graphicminuteness of a kinglake by a man whom we may call the literary assessor of belisarius,the rhetorician procopius of cã¦sarea. one or two incidents of the siege may be brieflynoticed here, and then we must hasten onwards to its close. owing to the vast size of rome not even thehost of the goths was able to accomplish a complete blockade of the city. they formedseven camps six on the left and one on the right bank of the tiber, and they obstructedeight out of its four teen gates; but while the east and south sides of the city werethus pretty effectually blockaded, there were large spaces in the western circuit by whichit was tolerably easy for belisarius to receive
reinforcements, to bring in occasional convoysof provisions, and to send away non-combatants who diminished his resisting power. one ofthe hardest blows dealt by the barbarians was their severance of the eleven great aqueductsfrom which rome received its water. this privation of an element so essential to the health andcomfort of the roman under the empire (who resorted to the bath as a modern italian resortsto the cafã© or the music hall), was felt as a terrible blow by all classes, and wroughta lasting change, and not a beneficial one, in the habits of the citizens, and in thesanitary condition of rome. it also seemed likely to have an injurious effect on thefood supply of the city, since the mills in which corn was ground for the daily rationsof the people were turned by water-power derived
from the aqueduct of trajan. belisarius, however,always fertile in resource, a man who, had he lived in the nineteenth century, wouldassuredly have been a great engineer, contrived to make father tiber grind out the daily supplyof flour for his roman children. he moored two barges in the narrowest part of the stream,where the current was the strongest, put his mill-stones on board of them, and hung a water-wheelbetween them to turn his mills. these river water-mills continued to be used on the tiberall through the middle ages, and even until they were superseded by the introduction ofsteam. the goths did not resign themselves to theslow languors of a blockade till they had made one vigorous and confident attempt ata storm. on the eighteenth day of the siege
the terrified romans saw from their windowsthe mighty armament approaching the city. a number of wooden towers as high as the walls,mounted on wheels, and drawn by the stout oxen of etruria, moved menacingly forwardamid the triumphant shouts of the barbarians, each of whom had a bundle of boughs and reedsunder his arm ready to be thrown into the fosse, and so prepare a level surface uponwhich the terrible engines might approach the walls. to resist this attack belisariushad prepared a large number of balist㦠(gigantic cross-bows worked by machinery and discharginga short wedge-like bolt with such force as to break trees or stones) had planted on thewalls, great slings, which the soldiers called wild asses (onagri), and had set in each gatethe deadly machine known as the wolf, and
which was a kind of double portcullis, workedboth from above and from below. but though the gothic host was approachingwith its threatening towers close to the walls, belisarius would not give the signal, andnot a balista, nor a wild ass was allowed to hurl its missiles against the foe. he onlylaughed aloud, and bade the soldiers do nothing till he gave the word of command. to the citizensthis seemed an evil jest, and they grumbled aloud at the impudence of the general whochose this moment of terrible suspense for merriment. but now when the goths were closeto the fosse, belisarius lifted his bow, singled out a mail-clad chief, and sent an arrow throughhis neck, inflicting a deadly wound. a great shout of triumph rose from the imperial soldiersas the proudly accoutred barbarian rolled
in the dust. another shot, another gothicchief slain, and again a shout of triumph. then the signal to shoot was given to thesoldiers, and hundreds of bolts from wild ass and balista were hurtling through theair, aimed not at gothic soldiers, but at the luckless oxen that drew the ponderoustowers. the beasts being slain, it was impossible for the goths who were immediately under thewalls and exposed to a deadly discharge of arrows from the battlements, to move theirtowers either backward or forward, and there they remained mere laughing-stocks in theirhuge immobility, till the end of the day, when they with all the rest of the gothicenginery were given as a prey to the flames. then men understood the meaning of the laughterof belisarius as he watched the preparations
of the barbarians and derided their childishsimplicity in supposing that he would allow them calmly to move up their towers till theytouched his wall, without using his artillery to cripple their advance. though the attack with the towers had thusfailed there was still fierce fighting to be done on the south-east and north-west ofthe city. at the prã¦nestine gate (porta maggiore), that noble structure which is formed out ofthe arcades of the aqueducts, there was a desperate onslaught of the barbarians, whichat one time seemed likely to be successful, but a sudden sortie of belisarius taking themin their rear turned them to headlong flight. in the opposite quarter the aurelian gatewas commanded by the mighty tomb-fortress
then known as the mausoleum of hadrian, andnow, in its dismantled and degraded state, as the castle of sant'angelo. here the peculiarshape of the fortress prevented the defenders from using their balist㦠with proper effecton the advancing foe, and when the besiegers were close under the walls the bolts fromthe engines flew over their heads. it seemed as if, after all, by the aurelian gate thebarbarians would enter rome, when, by a happy instinct, the garrison turned to the marblestatues which surrounded the tomb, wrenched them from their bases, and rained down sucha terrible shower of legs and arms and heads of gods and goddesses on their barbarian assailantsthat these soon fled in utter confusion. the whole result of this great day of assaultwas to convince witigis and his counsellors
that the city could not be taken in that manner,and that the siege must be turned into a blockade. a general sally which belisarius ordered,against his better judgment, in order to still the almost mutinous clamours of his troops,and which took place about the fiftieth day of the siege, proved almost as disastrousfor the romans as the assault had done for the goths. it was manifest that this was nota struggle which could be ended by a single blow on either side. all the miseries of along siege must be endured both by attackers and attacked, and the only question was onwhich side patience would first give way--whether the romans under roofs, but short of provisions,or the goths better fed, but encamped on the deadly campagna, would be the first to succumbto hunger and disease.
witigis had been in his day a brave soldier,but he evidently knew nothing of the art of war. he allowed belisarius to disencumberhimself of many useless consumers of food by sending the women, the children, and theslaves out of the city. his attention was disturbed by feigned attacks, when the reinforcements,which were tardily sent by justinian, and the convoys of provisions, which had beencollected by the wife of belisarius, the martial antonina, were to be brought within the walls.and, lastly, when at length, about the ninth month of the siege, he proposed a truce andthe reopening of negotiations with constantinople, he did not even insert in the conditions ofthe truce any limit to the quantity of supplies which under its cover the imperialists mightintroduce into the city. thus he played the
game of his wily antagonist, and abandonedall the advantages--and they were not many--which the nine months of blockade had won for him. the parleyings which preceded this truce havean especial interest for us, whose forefathers were at this very time engaged in making englandtheir own. the goths, after complaining that justinian had broken the solemn compact madebetween zeno and theodoric as to the conquest of italy from odovacar, went on to proposeterms of compromise. "they were willing", they said, "for the sake of peace to giveup sicily, that large and wealthy island, so important to a ruler who had now becomemaster of africa". belisarius answered with sarcastic courtesy: "such great benefits shouldbe repaid in kind. we will concede to the
goths the possession of the whole island ofbritain, which is much larger than sicily, and which was once possessed by the romansas sicily was once possessed by the goths". of course that country, though much largerthan sicily, was one the possession of which was absolutely unimportant to the emperorand his general. "what mattered it", they might well say, "who owned that misty andpoverty-stricken island. the oysters of rutupiã¦, some fine watch-dogs from caledonia, a littlelead from the malvern hills, and some cargoes of corn and wool--this was all that the empirehad ever gained from her troublesome conquest. even in the world of mind britain had donenothing more than give birth to one second-rate heretic. the curse of poverty and of barbarousinsignificance was upon her, and would remain
upon her till the end of time". the truce, as will be easily understood, broughtno alleviation to the sufferings of the goths, who were now almost more besieged than besiegers,and who were dying by thousands in the unhealthy campagna. before the end of march, 538, theybroke up their encampment, and marched, in sullen gloom, northwards to defend ravenna,which was already being threatened by the operations of a lieutenant of belisarius.the 150,000 men who had hastened to rome, dreading lest the imperialists should escapebefore they could encompass the city, were reduced to but a small portion of that number,perhaps not many more than the 10,000 which, after all his reinforcements had been received,seems to have been the greatest number of
actual soldiers serving under belisarius inthe defence of rome. i pass rapidly over the events of 538 and539. the imperial generals pressed northwards along the flaminian way. urbino, rimini, osimo,and other cities in this region were taken by them. but the goths fought hard, thoughthey gave little proof of strategic skill; and once, when they recaptured the great cityof milan, it looked as though they might almost be about to turn the tide of conquest. evidentlythey were far less demoralised by their past prosperity than the vandals. perhaps alsothe roman population of italy, who had met with far gentler and more righteous treatmentfrom the ostrogoths than their compeers in africa had met with from the vandals, andwho were now suffering the horrors of famine,
owing to the operations of the contendingarmies, assisted the operations of the byzantine invaders less than the roman provincials inafrica had done. whatever the cause, it was not till the early months of 540, nearly fiveyears after the beginning of the war, that belisarius and his army stood before the wallsand among the rivers of ravenna, almost the last stronghold of witigis. belisarius blockadedthe city, and his blockade was a far more stringent one than that which witigis haddrawn around rome. still there was the ancient and well-founded reputation for impregnabilityof the great adrian city, and, moreover, just at this time the ambassadors, sent by witigisto justinian, returned from constantinople, bearing the emperor's consent to a compromise.italy, south of the po, was to revert to the
empire; north of that river, the goths werestill to hold it, and the royal treasure was to be equally divided between the two states.belisarius called a council of war, and all his officers signed a written opinion "thatthe proposals of the emperor were excellent, and that no better terms could be obtainedfrom the barbarians". this, however, was by no means the secret thought of belisarius,who had set his heart on taking witigis as a captive to constantinople, and laying thekeys of ravenna at his master's feet. a strange proposition which came from the beleagueredcity seemed to open the way to the accomplishment of his purpose. the gothic nobles suggestedthat he, the great captain, whose might in war they had experienced, should become theirleader, should mount the throne of theodoric,
and should be crowned "king of the italiansand goths", the change in the order of the names indicating the subordinate positionwhich the humbled barbarians were willing to assume. belisarius seemed to acquiescein the proposal (though his secretary assures us that he never harboured a thought of disloyaltyto his master), and received the oath of the gothic envoys for the surrender of the city,postponing his own coronation-oath to his new subjects till he could swear it in thepresence of witigis and all his nobles, for witigis, too, was a consenting, nay, an eager,party to the transaction. thus, by an act of dissimulation, which brought some stainon his knightly honour (we are tempted to use the language of chivalry in speaking ofthese events), but which left no stain on
his loyalty to the emperor of rome, did belisariusobtain possession of the impregnable ravenna. he marched in, he and his veterans, into thefamine-stricken city. when the gothic women saw the little dark men filing past them throughthe streets, and contrasted them with their own long-limbed, flaxen-haired giants, theyspat in the faces of their husbands, and said: "are you men, to have allowed yourselves tobe beaten by such manikins as these?" before the triumphal entry was finished thegoths had no doubt discovered that they were duped. no coronation oath was sworn. belisarius,still the humble servant of justinianus augustus, did not allow himself to be raised on theshield and saluted as king of the italians and goths. the gothic warriors were kindlytreated, but dismissed to their farms between
the apennines and the adriatic. ravenna wasagain an imperial city, and destined to remain so for two centuries. witigis, with his wifeand children, were carried captives to constantinople where, before many years were over, the dethronedmonarch died. his widow, matasuentha, was soon remarried to germanus, the nephew ofjustinian, and thus the granddaughter of theodoric obtained that position as a great lady ofbyzantium which was far more gratifying to her taste than the rude royalty of ravenna. there is one more personage whose subsequentfortunes must be briefly glanced at here. cassiodorus, the minister of theodoric andamalasuentha, remained, as we regret to find, in the service of theodahad when sole kingand composed his stilted sentences at the
bidding of amalasuentha's murderer. witigisalso employed him to write his address to his subjects on ascending the throne. he doesnot seem to have taken any part in the siege of rome, and before the tide of war rolledback upon ravenna, he had withdrawn from public affairs. he retired to his native town, squillace,high up on the calabrian hills, and there founded a monastery and a hermitage in thesuperintendence of which his happy years glided on till he died, having nearly completed acentury of life. his was one of the first and greatest of the literary monasteries which,by perpetuating copies of the scriptures, and the greek and roman classics, have conferredso great a boon on posterity. when ceolfrid, the abbot of jarrow, would offer to the holyfather at rome a most priceless gift, he sent
the far-famed codex amiatinus, a copy of thevulgate, made by a disciple of cassiodorus, if not by cassiodorus himself. chapter xvii.totila. with the fall of ravenna, and the captivityof king witigis, it seemed as if the chapter of ostrogothic dominion in italy was ended.in fact, however, the war was prolonged for a further period of thirteen years, a timeglorious for the goths, disgraceful for the empire, full of lamentation and woe for theunhappy country which was to be the prize of victory. the departure of belisarius, summoned to theeast by his master in order to conduct another
persian war, left the newly won provinceson an in cline sloping downwards to anarchy. of all the generals who remained behind, braveand capable men as some of them were, there was none who possessed the unquestioned ascendancyof belisarius, either in genius or character. each thought himself as good as the others:there was no subordination, no hearty co-operation towards a common end, but instead of thesenecessary conditions of success there was an eager emulation in the race towards wealth,and in this ignoble contest the unhappy "roman", the italian landholder, for whose sake, nominally,the gothic war was undertaken, found himself pillaged and trampled upon as he had neverbeen by the most brutal of the barbarians. nor were the military officers the only offenders.a swarm of civil servants flew westwards from
byzantium and lighted on the unhappy country.their duty was to extort money by any and all means for their master, their pleasureto accumulate fortunes for themselves; but whether the logothete plundered for the emperoror for himself, the italian tax-payer equally had the life-blood sucked from his veins.even the soldiers by whom the marvellous victories of the last five years had been won, foundthemselves at the mercy of this hateful bureaucracy; arrears of pay left undischarged, fines inflicted,everything done to force upon their embittered souls the reflection that they had serveda mean and ungrateful master. of all these oppressors of italy none wasmore justly abhorred than alexander the logothete. this man, who was placed at the head of thefinancial administration, and who seems by
virtue of that position to have been practicallysupreme in all but military operations, had been lifted from a very humble sphere to eminence,from poverty to boundless wealth, but the one justification which he could always offerfor his self-advancement was this, that no one else had been so successful as he in fillingthe coffers of his master. the soldiers were, by his proceedings against them, reduced toa poor, miserable, and despised remnant. the roman inhabitants of italy, especially thenobles, found that he hunted up with wonderful keenness and assiduity, and enforced withrelentless sternness all the claims--and they were probably not a few--which the easy-temperedgothic kings had suffered to lapse. in their simplicity these nobles may have imaginedthat they could plead that they were serving
the emperor by withholding contributions fromthe barbarian. not so, however. theodoric, now that his dynasty had been overthrown,became again a legitimate ruler, and justinian as his heir would exact to the uttermost hisunclaimed rights. the nature of the grasping logothete was well-known in his own country,and the byzantines, using the old greek weapon of satire against an unpopular ruler, calledhim "alexander the scissors", declaring that there was no one so clever as he in clippingthe gold coins of the currency without impairing their roundness. the result of all these oppressions and thismisgovernment was to raise up in a marvellous manner the gothic standard from the dust intowhich it had fallen. when belisarius left
italy, only one city still remained to thegoths, the strong city of ticinum, which is now known as pavia, and which, from its magnificentposition at the angle of the ticino and the po, was often in the early middle ages thelast stronghold to be surrendered in northwestern italy. here had the goths chosen one of theirnobles, ildibad, for their king, but the new king had but one thousand soldiers under him,and his might well seem a desperate cause. before the end of 540, however, the departureof belisarius, the wrangling among his successors, the oppressions of alexander the logothete,the disaffection of the ruined soldiery had completely changed the face of affairs. anarmy of considerable size, consisting in great measure of deserters from the imperial standard,obeyed the orders of ildibad; he won a great
pitched battle near treviso over vitalius,the best of the imperial generals, and the whole of italy north of the po again ownedthe sway of the gothic king. internal feuds delayed for a little time therevival of the strength of the barbarians. there was strife between ildibad and the familyof the deposed witigis, and this strife led to ildibad's assassination and to the electionof an utterly incapable successor, eraric the rugian. but in the autumn of 541 all thesedomestic discords were at an end; eraric had been slain, and the nephew of ildibad wasthe universally recognised king of the ostrogoths. this man, who was destined to reign for elevenyears, twice to stand as conqueror within the walls of rome, to bring back almost thewhole of italy under the dominion of his people,
to be in a scarcely lower degree than theodorichimself the hero and champion of the ostrogothic race, was the young and gallant totila. with true statesmanlike instinct the new kingperceived that the cause of the past failure of the goths lay in the alienated affectionsof the people of italy. the greater misgovernment of the emperor's servants, the coldly calculatingrapacity of alexander the scissors, and the arrogant injustice of the generals, terribleonly to the weak, had given him a chance of winning back the love of the italian peopleand of restoring that happy state of things which prevailed after the downfall of odovacar,when all classes, nobles and peasants, goths and romans, joined in welcoming theodoricas their king. totila therefore kept a strong
hand upon his soldiers, sternly repressedall plundering and outrage, and insisted on the peasants being paid for all the storeswhich the army needed on its march. one day a roman inhabitant of calabria came beforehim to complain of one of the king's life-guardsmen who had committed an outrage upon his daughter.the guardsman, not denying the charge, was at once put in ward. then the most influentialnobles assembled at the king's tent, and besought him not to punish a brave and capable soldierfor such an offence. totila replied that he mourned as much as they could do over thenecessity of taking away the life of one of his countrymen, but that the common good,the safety of the nation, required this sacrifice. at the outset of the war they had all thewealth of italy and countless brave hearts
at their disposal, but all these advantageshad availed them nothing because they had an unjust king, theodahad, at their head.now the divine favour on their righteous cause seemed to be giving them the victory, butonly by a continuance in righteous deeds could they hope to secure it. with these words hewon over even the interceding goths to his opinion. the guardsman was sentenced to death,and his goods were confiscated for the benefit of the maiden whom he had wronged. at the same time that totila showed himselfthus gentle and just towards the roman inhabitants, he skilfully conducted the war so as to woundthe empire in its tenderest part--finance. justinian's aim, in italy as in africa, wasto make the newly annexed territory pay its
own expenses and hand over a good balanceto the imperial treasury. it was for this purpose that the logothetes had been let looseupon italy--that the provincials had been maddened by the extortions of the tax-gatherer,that the soldiers had been driven to mutiny and defection. now with his loyal and welldisciplined troops, totila moved over the country from the alps to calabria, quietlycollecting the taxes claimed by the emperor and the rents due to the refugee landlords,and in this way, without oppressing the people, weakened the imperial government and put himselfin a position to pay liberally for the commissariat of his army. thus the difficulties of theimperial treasury increased. justinian became more and more unwilling to loosen his purse-stringsfor the sake of a province which showed an
ever-dwindling return. the pay of the soldiersgot more and more hopelessly into arrear. they deserted in increasing numbers to thestandard of the brave and generous young king of the goths. hence, it came to pass, thatin the spring of 544, when totila had been only for two and a half years king, he hadgained two pitched battles by land and one by sea, had taken naples and beneventum, couldmarch freely from one end of italy to the other, and in fact, with the exception ofravenna, rome, and a few other strongholds, had won back from the empire the whole ofthat italy which had been acquired with so much toil and so much bloodshed. there was, of course, bitter disappointmentin the council-chamber of justinian at this
issue of an enterprise which had seemed atfirst so successful. there was but one sentence on all men's lips--"only belisarius can recoveritaly", and it was uttered so loudly and so universally, that the emperor could not buthear it. but justinian, ever since the offer of the western throne to belisarius, seemsto have looked upon him with jealousy as a possible rival, and (what was even more fatalto his interests at court), the empress theodora had come to regard him with dislike and suspicion,partly because of a domestic quarrel in which she had taken the part of his wife antoninaagainst him, and partly because when justinian was lying plague-stricken and apparently atthe point of death, belisarius had discussed the question of the succession to the thronein a manner which the empress considered hostile
to her interests. for these reasons the greatgeneral had been for some years in disgrace. a large part of his property was taken awayfrom him, and some of it was handed over to antonina, with whom he had been ordered toreconcile himself on the most humbling terms: his great military household, containing manymen of servile origin, whom he had trained to such deeds of valour that it was a commonsaying, "one household alone has destroyed the kingdom of theodoric", was broken up,and those brave men who would willingly have died for their chief, were portioned out bylot among the other generals and the eunuchs of the palace. still, in deference to the unanimous opinionof his counsellors, justinian decided once
more to avail himself of the services of belisariusfor the reconquest of italy. but his unquenched jealousy of his great general's fame, andthe almost bankrupt condition of the imperial exchequer converged to the same point, andcaused justinian, while entrusting belisarius with the command, to couple with it the monstrousstipulation that he was not to ask for any money for the war. and this, though it wasclear to all men that the want of money and the consequent desertion of the imperial standardby whole companies of grumbling barbarians, had been one main cause of the amazing successof totila. thus crippled by his master, and having his own spirit broken by imperial ingratitudeand domestic unhappiness, belisarius, in the whole course of his second command in italy,which lasted for five years--(544-549) did
nothing, or i should rather say only one thing,worthy of his former reputation. this is the judgment which his former friend and admirer,procopius, passes on this period of his life. "thus then", (in 549) "belisarius departedto byzantium without glory, having been for five years in italy, but having never beenstrong enough to make a regular march by land in all that time, but having flitted aboutfrom one fortress on the coast to another, and so left the enemy free to capture romeand almost every other place which they attacked". notwithstanding this harsh sentence, it wasin connection with the siege of rome that the old belisarius, the man of infinite resourceand courageous dexterity, once more revealed himself, and while we gladly let all the otherevents of these five tedious years glide into
oblivion, it is worth while devoting a fewpages to the second and third gothic sieges of rome. totila had quite determined not to repeatthe mistake of witigis, by dashing his army to pieces against the walls of rome, but,for all that, he could not feel his recovery of italy to be complete so long as the eternalcity defied his power. he therefore slowly tightened his grasp on the city, capturingone town after another in its neighbourhood and watching the roads to prevent convoysof provisions from entering it. he was on good terms with the peasants of the surroundingcountry, paid liberally for all the provisions required by his army (far smaller than thatof witigis), and kept his soldiers in good
heart and in high health, while the unhappycitizens were seeing the great enemy--famine--slowly approach nearer and nearer to their homes. within the city there was now no such providentand resourceful general as belisarius. bessas, the commandant, himself an ostrogoth of må“siaby birth, was a brave man, but coarse, selfish, and unfeeling. intent only on filling hisown coffers by selling the corn which he had stored up in his warehouses at a famine-priceto the citizens, he was not touched by the increasing misery around him, and made noeffectual attempt to break the net which totila had drawn round rome. belisarius himself,"flitting from point to point of the coast", had come to portus eighteen miles from rome,at the mouth of the tiber. it was no want
of good-will on his part that prevented himfrom bringing his provision-ships up the river to the help of the famished city, but aboutfour miles above portus totila had placed a strong boom of timber, protected in frontby an iron chain and guarded by two towers, one at each end of the bridge which was abovethe boom. belisarius made his preparations for destroying the boom: a floating toweras high as the bridge placed on two barges, a large vessel filled with "greek fire" atthe top of the tower, soldiers below to hew the boom in pieces and sever the chain, along train of merchantmen behind laden with provisions for the hungry romans, and mannedby archers who poured a deadly volley of arrows on the defenders of the bridge. all went wellwith his design up to a certain point. the
chain was severed, the goths fell fast underthe arrows from the ships, the vessel of "greek fire" was hurled upon one of the forts, whichwas soon wrapped in flames. with might and main the imperial soldiers began to hack atthe boom, and it seemed as if in a few minutes the corn-laden vessels would be sailing upthe tiber, bringing glad relief to the starving citizens. but just at that moment a horsemangalloped up to belisarius with the unwelcome tidings--"isaac is taken prisoner". isaacthe armenian was belisarius' second in command, whom he had left at portus in charge of hisstores, his munitions of war, and most important of all, the now reconciled antonina. in spiteof belisarius' strict injunction to act solely on the defensive, isaac, watching from afarthe successful movements of his chief, had
sallied forth to attack the gothic garrisonat ostia on the opposite bank of the river. his defeat and consequent capture were eventsof little moment in themselves, but all-important as arresting the victorious career of belisarius.for to the anxious soul of the general the capture of isaac seemed to mean the captureof portus, the cutting off of his army from their base of operations, the captivity ofhis beloved antonina. he gave the signal for retreat; the attempt to provision rome hadfailed; the imperial army returned to portus. when he found what it was that had reallyhappened, and by what a combination of folly and ill luck he had been prevented from winninga splendid victory, his annoyance was so great that combined with the unwholesome air ofthe campagna it threw him into a fever which
brought him near to death and prevented himfor some months from taking any part in the war. meanwhile dire famine bore sway in the beleagueredcity. wheat was sold for ã‚â£22 a quarter, and the greater part of the citizens werethankful to live on coarse bread made of bran, which was doled out to them by bessas at aquarter of the price of wheat. before long even this bran became a luxury beyond theirpower to purchase. dogs and mice provided them with their only meals of flesh, but thestaple article of food was nettles. with blackened skin and drawn faces, mere ghosts of theirformer selves, the once proud and prosperous citizens of rome wandered about the wasteplaces 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 this misery was suddenly ended.some isaurian soldiers who were guarding the asinarian gate in the south-east of the citymade overtures to the gothic soldiers for the betrayal of their post. these isaurianswere probably part of the former garrison of naples whom totila had treated with greatgenerosity after the surrender of that city. they remembered the kindness then shown 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 overthe walls at night by the friendly isaurians,
ran round to the asinarian gate, batteredits bolts and bars to pieces, and let in their waiting comrades. unopposed, the gothic armymarched in, unresisting, the imperial troops marched out by the flaminian gate. the playwas precisely the same that had been enacted ten years before when belisarius won the cityfrom leudaris, but with the parts reversed. what witigis with his one hundred and fiftythousand goths had failed to accomplish, an army of not more than a tenth of that numberhad accomplished under totila. bessas and the other generals fled headlong with therest of the crowd that pressed out of the flaminian gate, and the treasure, accumulatedwith such brutal disregard of human suffering, fell into the hands of the besiegers.
at first murder and plunder raged uncheckedthrough the streets of the city, the exasperation which had been caused by the events of thelong siege having made every gothic heart bitter against rome and romans. but aftersixty citizens had been slain, totila, who had gone to st. peter's to offer up his prayersand thanksgivings, listened to the intercession of the deacon pelagius and commanded thatslaughter should cease. but there were only five hundred citizens left in rome to receivethe benefit of the amnesty, so great had been the depopulation of the city by war and famine. and now had come a fateful moment in the historyof roma ã†terna. a conqueror stood within her walls, not in mere joyousness of heartlike alaric, pleased with the exploit of bringing
to her knees the mistress of the world, notintent on vulgar plans of plunder like gaiseric, but nourishing a deep and deadly hatred againstthat false and ungrateful city, and, by the ghosts of a hundred and fifty thousand ofhis countrymen who had died before her untaken walls, beckoned on a memorable revenge. totilawould spare, as he had promised, the lives of the trembling citizens, but he had determinedthat rome herself should perish. the walls should be dismantled, the public buildingsburned to the ground, and sheep should graze again over the seven hills of the city asthey had grazed thirteen hundred years before, when romulus and remus were suckled by thewolf. from this purpose, however, he was moved by the intercession of belisarius, who, fromhis couch of fever, wrote a spirit-stirring
letter to totila, pleading for rome, greatestand most glorious of all cities that the sun looked down upon, the work not of one kingnor one century, but of long ages and many generations of noble men. belisarius concludedwith an appeal to the gothic king to consider what should be his own eternal record in history,whether he would rather be remembered as the preserver or the destroyer of the greatestcity in the world. this appeal, made by one hero to another,was successful. totila was still bent on preventing the city from ever again becoming a strongholdof the enemy, and therefore determined to lay one-third of the walls level with theground, but he assured the messengers of belisarius that he would leave the great monuments ofrome untouched. having accomplished the needed
demolition of her defences, he marched forthwith his army from the desolate and sepulchral city and took up a position in the alban mountains,which are seen by the dwellers in rome far off on their south-eastern horizon. when totila withdrew rome was left, we aretold, absolutely devoid of inhabitants. the senators he kept in his camp as hostages,and all the less influential citizens with their wives and children were sent away tothe confines of campania. for forty days or more the great city which had been for solong the heart of the human universe, the city which, with the million-fold tide oflife throbbing in her veins, had most vividly prefigured the london of our own day, remained"waste and without inhabitants", as desolate
as anderida in kent had been left half a centurybefore by her savage saxon conquerors. and then came another change--one of the mostmarvellous in the history of that city whose whole life has been a marvel. while totilaabode in his camp on the alban hills, belisarius, rising from the bed to which fever had forso many weeks chained him, made a visit to rome, accompanied by a thousand soldiers,that he might see with his own eyes into what depth of calamity she had fallen. at first,it would seem, mere curiosity led him to the ruined city, but when he was there, gazingon totila's work of devastation, a brilliant thought flashed through his brain. after allthe demolitions of totila, the ruin was not irretrievable. by repairing the rents in thewalls, rome might yet be made defensible.
he would re-occupy it, and the goths shouldfind that they had all their work to do over again. the idea seemed at first to his counsellorslike the suggestion of delirium, but as it rapidly took shape under his hands, it wasrecognised as being indeed a masterstroke of well-calculated audacity. leaving a smallbody of men to guard his base of operations at portus, he moved every available man torome, crowded them up to the gaps made by totila, bade them build anyhow, with any sortof material--mortar was out of the question; it must be mere dry walling that they couldaccomplish,--only let them preserve some semblance of an upright wall, and crown the summit ofit with a rampart of stakes. the deep fosse below fortunately remained as it was, notfilled up. so in five and twenty days the
circuit of the walls was completed, trulyin a most slovenly style of building, the marks of which we can see even to this day,but rome was once again a "fenced city". as soon as totila heard the unwelcome tidings,he marched with his whole army to rome, hoping to take the city, as his soldiers said, "atthe first shout". but he had belisarius to deal with, not bessas. there had not yet beentime even to make new gates for the city instead of those which totila had destroyed, but belisariusplanted all his bravest soldiers in the void places where the gates should be, and guardedthe approach by caltrops (somewhat like those wherewith bruce defended his line at bannockburn),so as to make a charge of gothic cavalry impossible. three long days of hard-fought battle werespent round the fateful city. in each the
goths, whatever temporary advantages theymight gain, were finally repulsed, and at length totila, who was not going to repeatthe error of witigis, marched away from the too well-known scene, amid the bitter reproachesof the gothic nobles, who before had praised him like a god for all his valour and dexterityin war, but now, on the morrow of his first great blunder, loudly upbraided him for hisimprudence, adding the obvious and easy piece of epimethean criticism, "that the city oughteither to have been utterly destroyed, or else occupied with a sufficient force". meanwhilebelisarius at his leisure completed the repair of the walls, hung the massive gates on theirhinges, had keys made to fit their locks, and sent the duplicate keys to justinian.the roman empire once again had rome.
and yet this re-occupation of the eternalcity, brilliant and striking achievement as it was, had little influence on the courseof the war. rome was now like a great stone left in an alluvial plain showing where theriver had once flowed, but the currents of commerce, of politics, of war, flowed nowin other channels. belisarius, leaving a garrison in rome, had to betake himself once more tothat desultory warfare, flitting round the coast from one naval fortress to another,in which the earlier years of his second command had been passed; and at length, early in 549,only two years after his re-occupation of rome, he obtained as a great favour, throughthe intercession of antonina, permission to resign his command and return to constantinople.it was on this occasion that procopius passed
that harsh judgment as to the inglorious characterof these later operations of his in italy, which was quoted on a previous page. i will briefly summarise the subsequent eventsin the life of the old hero: once more, ten years after the return of belisarius(in 559), his services were claimed by justinian in order to repel a horde of savage huns whohad penetrated within eighteen miles of constantinople. the work was brilliantly done, with much ofthe old ingenuity and fertility of resource which had marked his first campaign in italy,and then belisarius relapsed into inactivity. he was again accused (562), probably withoutjustice, of abetting a conspiracy against the emperor, was disgraced and imprisonedin his own palace. after seven months he was
restored to the imperial favour, the falsityof the accusation against him having probably become apparent. he died in 565, in aboutthe sixtieth year of his age, and only a few months before his jealous master. he had morethan once had to endure the withdrawal of that master's confidence, and some portionsof his vast wealth were on two occasions taken from him. but this is all that can be trulysaid as to the reverses of fortune undergone by the conqueror of the vandals and the goths.the stories of his blindness and of his beggary, of his holding forth a wooden bowl and whiningout "date obolum belisario", rest on no good foundation, and either arise from a confusionbetween belisarius and another disgraced minister of justinian, or else are simply due to themyth-making industry of the middle ages.
chapter xviii.narses. soon after the return of belisarius to constantinoplecame the fourth siege of rome. totila, who had sought the hand of a frankish princessin marriage, received for answer from her father, "that the man who had not been ableto keep rome when he had taken it, but had destroyed part and abandoned the rest to theenemy, was no king of italy". the taunt stung totila to the quick. we knownot whether he won his frankish bride or no, but he was determined to win rome. assaultagain failing, he occupied portus and instituted a more rigorous blockade than ever. but ithad become a matter of some difficulty to starve out the defenders of rome, for therewere practically no citizens there, only a
garrison, for whose food the corn grown withinthe enclosure of the walls was nearly sufficient. the economic change from the days of the empirethus revealed to us is almost as great as if the harvests of hyde park and regent'spark sufficed to feed the diminished population of london. there was, however, among the imperial soldiersin the garrison of rome, as elsewhere, deep discontent, amounting sometimes to mutiny,at the long withholding of their arrears of pay; and the sight of the pomp and splendour,which surrounded the former betrayer of rome when they rode in the ranks with totila, wastoo much for their isaurian countrymen. the men who kept watch by the gate of st. paul(close to the pyramid of c. sestius, and now
overlooking the english cemetery and keats'grave) offered to surrender their post to the gothic king. to distract the attentionof the garrison he sent by night a little band of soldiers on two skiffs up the tiberas far as they could penetrate towards the heart of the city. these men blew a loud blastwith their trumpets, and thereby called the bulk of the defenders down to the river-walls,while the isaurians were opening st. paul's gate to the besiegers, who marched in almostunopposed. the garrison galloped off along the road to civita vecchia, and on their wayfell into an ambush which totila had prepared for them, whereby most of them perished (549). totila, now a second time master of rome,determined to hold it securely. he restored
some of the public buildings which he hadpreviously destroyed; he adorned and beautified the city to the utmost of his power; he invitedthe senators and their families to return; he celebrated the equestrian games in thecircus maximus: in all things he behaved himself as much as possible like one of the old emperorsof rome. the year 550 was the high-water mark of thesuccess of the gothic arms. in italy only four cities--all on the sea-coast--were leftto the emperor; these were ravenna, ancona, otranto, and crotona. in sicily most of thecities were still imperial, but totila had moved freely hither and thither through theisland, ravaging the villas and the farms, collecting great stores of grain and fruit,driving off horses and cattle, and generally
visiting on the hapless sicilians the treacherywhich in his view they had shown to the ostrogothic dynasty by the eagerness with which, fifteenyears before, they had welcomed the arms of belisarius. but at the end of a long and exhausting warit is often seen that victory rests with that power which has enough reserve force leftto make one final effort, even though that effort in the earlier years of the war mightnot have been deemed a great one. so was it now with justinian's conquest of italy. thoughhe himself was utterly weary of the sisyphean labour, he would not surrender a shred ofhis theoretical claims, nor would he even condescend to admit to an audience the ambassadorsof totila, who came to plead for peace and
alliance between the two hostile powers. in his perplexity as to the further conductof the war he offered the command to his grand chamberlain narses, who eagerly accepted it.the choice was indeed a strange one. narses, an armenian by birth, brought as an eunuchto constantinople, and dedicated to the service of the palace, had grown grey in that service,and was now seventy-four years of age. but he was of "illustrious" rank, he shared themost secret counsels of the emperor, he was able freely to unloose the purse-strings whichhad been so parsimoniously closed to belisarius, and he had set his whole heart on succeedingwhere belisarius had failed. moreover, he was himself both wealthy and generous, andhe brought with him a huge and motley host
of barbarians, huns, lombards, gepids, herulians,all eager to serve under the free-handed chamberlain, and to be enriched by him with the spoil ofitaly. in the spring of 552, the eunuch-general,with this strange multitude calling itself a roman army, marched round the head of theadriatic gulf and entered the impregnable seat of empire, ravenna. by adroit strategyhe evaded the gothic generals who had been ordered to arrest his progress in north-easternitaly and--probably by about midsummer--he had reached the point a little south-westof ancona, where the flaminian way, the great northern road from rome, crosses the apennines.here on the crest of the mountains narses encamped, and here totila met him, eager forthe fight which was to decide the future dominion
of italy. a space of about twelve miles separated thehostile camps. narses sent some of his most trusted counsellors to warn totila not tocontinue the struggle any longer against the irresistible might of the empire; "but ifyou will fight", said the messengers, "name the day". totila indignantly spurned the proposalof surrender and named the eighth day from thence as the day of battle. narses, however,suspecting some stratagem, bade his troops prepare for action, and it was well that hedid so, for on the next day totila with all his army was at hand. a hill, which to some extent commanded thebattle-field, was the first objective point
of both generals. narses sent fifty of hisbravest men over-night to take up their position on this hill, and the gothic troops, chieflycavalry, which were sent to dislodge them, failed to effect their purpose, the horsesbeing frightened by the din which the imperial soldiers made, clashing with their spearsupon their shields. several lives were lost on this preliminary skirmish, the honoursof which remained with the soldiers of narses. at dawn of day the troops were drawn up inorder of battle, but narses had made all his arrangements on a defensive rather than anoffensive plan and totila, who was expecting a reinforcement of two thousand goths underhis brave young lieutenant teias, wished to postpone the attack. both generals haranguedtheir armies: totila, in words of lordly scorn
for the patch-work host of various nationalitieswhich justinian, weary of the war, had sent against him. it was the emperor's last effort,he declared, and when this heterogeneous army was defeated, the brave goths would be ableto rest from their labours. narses, on the other hand, congratulated his soldiers ontheir evident superiority in numbers to the gothic host. they fought too, as he remindedthem, for the roman empire, which was in its nature, and by the will of providence, eternal,while these little barbarian states, vandal, gothic, and the like, sprang up like mushrooms,lived their little day, and then vanished away, leaving no trace behind them. he hadrecourse also to less refined and philosophical arguments. riding rapidly along the ranks,the eunuch dangled before the eyes of his
barbarian auxiliaries golden armlets, goldencollars, golden bridles. "these", said he, "and such other ornaments as these, shallbe the reward of your valour, if you fight well to-day". the long morning of waiting was partly occupiedby a duel between two chosen champions. a warrior, named cocas, who had deserted fromemperor to king, rode up to the imperial army, challenging their bravest to single combat.one of narses' lifeguards, an armenian' like his master, anzalas by name, accepted thechallenge. cocas couched his spear and rode fiercely at his foe, thinking to pierce himin the belly. anzalas dexterously swerved aside at the critical moment and gave a thrustwith his spear at the left side of his antagonist,
who fell lifeless to the ground. a mightyshout rose from the imperial ranks at this propitious omen of the coming battle. notyet, however, was that battle to be gained. king totila rode forth in the open space betweenboth armies, "that he might show the enemy what manner of man he was". his armour waslavishly adorned with gold: from the cheek-piece of his helmet, from his pilum and his spearhung purple pennants; his whole equipment was magnificent and kingly. bestriding a verytall war-horse he played the game of a military athlete with accomplished skill. he wheeledhis horse first to the right, then to the left, in graceful curves; then he tossed hisspear on high to the morning breezes and caught it in the middle as it descended with quiveringfall; then he threw it deftly from one hand
to another, he stooped low on his horse, heraised himself up again. everything was done as artistically as the dance of a well-trainedperformer. all this "was beautiful to look at, but it was not war". the ugly, wrinkledold armenian in the other camp, who probably kept his seat on horseback with difficulty,knew, one may suspect, more of the deadly science of war than the brilliant and martialtotila. at length the long-looked-for two thousandarrived, and totila gave the signal to charge upon the foe. it was the hour of the noon-tidemeal, and he hoped to catch the imperial troops in the disorder of their repast; but for thisalso narses, the wary, had provided. even the food necessary to support their strengthwas to be taken by the soldiers, all keeping
their ranks, all armed, and all watching intentlythe movements of the enemy. narses had purposely somewhat weakened his centre in order to strengthenhis wings, which, as the gothic cavalry charged, closed round them and poured a deadly showerof arrows into their flanks. again, as in the campaigns of belisarius, the hippo-toxotai,the "mounted rifles" of the empire, decided the fate of the battle. vain against theirmurderous volleys was the valour of the gothic horseman, the thrust of the gothic lance,the might of the tall gothic steed. charge upon charge of the goths was made in vain;the cavalry could never reach the weak but distant centre of the imperialists. at length,when the sun was declining, the horsemen came staggering back, a disorganised and beatenband. their panic communicated itself to the
infantry, who were probably the weakest sectionof the army; the rout was complete, and the whole of the gothic host was seen either flying,surrendering, or dying. as evening fell totila, with five of his friendshastened from the lost battle-field. a young gepid chief, named asbad, ignorant who hewas couched his lance to strike totila in the back. a young gothic page incautiouslycried out, "dog! would you strike your lord?" hereby revealing the rank of the fugitiveand, of course, only nerving the arm of asbad to strike a more deadly blow. asbad was woundedin return and his companions intent on staunching his wound let the fugitives ride on, but thewound of totila was mortal. his friends hurried him on, eight miles down the valley, to thelittle village of caprã¦, where they alighted
and strove to tend his wound. but their labourwas vain; the gallant king soon drew his last breath and was hastily buried by his comradesin that obscure hamlet. the romans knew not what had become of theirgreat foe till several days after, when some soldiers were riding past the village, a gothicwoman told them of the death of totila and pointed out to them his grave. they doubtedthe truth of her story, but opened the grave and gazed their fill on that which was, pastall dispute, the corpse of totila. the news brought joy to the heart of narses, who returnedheartiest thanks to god and to the virgin, his especial patroness, and then proceededto disembarrass himself as quickly as possible of the wild barbarians, especially the lombards,by whose aid he had won the victory which
destroyed the last hopes of the ostrogothicmonarchy in italy. (568) not thus easily, however, was the tideof barbarian invasion to be turned. the lombards had found their way into italy as auxiliaries.they returned thither sixteen years after as conquerors, conquerors the most ruthlessand brutal that italy had yet groaned under. from that day for thirteen centuries the unityof italy was a dream. first the lombard king and the byzantine emperor tore her in pieces.then the frank descended from the alps to join in the fray. the german, the saracen,the norman made their appearance on the scene. not all wished to ravage and despoil; somehad high and noble purposes in their hearts, but, in fact, they all tended to divide her.the popes even at their best, even while warring
as italian patriots against the foreign emperor,still divided their country. last of all came the spaniard and the austrian, by whom, downto our own day, italy was looked upon as an estate, out of which kingdoms and duchiesmight be carved at pleasure as appanages for younger sons and compensations for lost provinces.only at length, towards the close of the nineteenth century, has italy regained that pricelessboon of national unity, which might have been hers before it was attained by any other countryin europe, if only the ambition of emperors and the false sentiment of "roman" patriotswould have spared the goodly tree which had been planted in italian soil by theodoricthe ostrogoth. chapter xix.
the theodoric of saga. it is one of the most striking testimoniesto the greatness of theodoric's work and character, that his name is one of the very few whichpassed from history into the epic poetry of the german and scandinavian peoples. true,there is scarcely one feature of the great ostrogothic king preserved in the mythicalportrait painted by minstrels and sagamen; true, theodoric of verona would have listenedin incredulous or contemptuous amazement to the romantic adventures related of dietrichof bern; still the fact that his name was chosen by the poets of the early middle agesas the string upon which the pearls of their fantastic imaginations were to be strung,shows how powerfully his career had impressed
their barbaric forefathers. theodoric's eminencein this respect, his renown in mediã¦val saga, is shared apparently but by three other undoubtedlyhistoric personages: his collateral ancestor, hermanric; the great world-conqueror, attila;and gundahar, king of the burgundians, about whom history really records nothing, savehis defeat in battle by the huns. as it would be a hopeless attempt in a shortchapter like the present to discuss the various allusions to dietrich von bern in the teutonicand scandinavian sagas, i shall invite the reader's attention to one only, that whichconcerns itself most exclusively with his life, and which is generally called the "wilkinasaga", though some german scholars prefer to call it by the more appropriate name of"thidreks saga".
the earliest manuscripts of this saga at presentknown are attributed to the first half of the thirteenth century. there are many allusionsin the work to other sources of information both written and oral, but the saga itselfin its present form appears to contain the story of theodoric as current in the neighbourhoodof bremen and mã¼nster, translated into the old norse language, and no doubt somewhatmodified by the influence of scandinavian legends on the mind of the translator. inits present form it is not a poem but a prose work, and though the flow of the ballad andthe twang of the minstrel's harp still often make themselves felt even through the dulllatin translation of johan peringskiold, there are many chapters of absolutely unredeemedprose, full of genealogical details and the
marches of armies, as dry as any history,though purely imaginary. i will now proceed to give the outline ofthe story of theodoric as told in the "wilkina saga", i shall not harass the reader by continualrepetitions of the phrase "it is said", or "it is fabled", but will ask him to understandonce for all that the story so circumstantially told is a mere romance, having hardly theslenderest connection with the actual history of theodoric, or with any other event thathas happened on our planet. the knight samson, the grandfather of theodoric,was a native of salerno and served in the court of earl roger, the lord of that citytall and dark, with black brows and long, thin face, he was distinguished by great personalstrength, and his ambition was equal to his
prowess. earl roger had a most lovely daughter,hildeswide, to whom samson dared to raise his eyes in love. being sent one day by herfather to the tower where she dwelt, with dainty morsels from his table for her repast,he persuaded her to mount his servant's horse and ride away with him into the forest. forthis earl roger confiscated his possessions and sought his life. enraged at the decreeof exile and death which had been passed against him, samson issued forth from his forest toravage earl roger's farms. in his return to the forest, being intercepted by the earland sixty of his knights, he was seized with sudden fury, and struck down the earl's standard-bearer,dealt so terrible a blow at the earl that he lopped off not only his head but that ofthe steed on which he rode, slew fifteen knights
besides, and then galloped off, himself unwounded,to the forest where hildeswide abode. thus did salerno lose her lord. brunstein, the brother of earl roger, soughtto avenge his death, but after two years of desultory warfare was himself surprised ina night attack by samson, compelled to flee, overtaken and slain. so samson went on andincreased in strength, treading down all his enemies; but not till he had persuaded thecitizens of salerno to accept him as their lord would he assume the title of king. thendid he send out messengers to announce to all the other kingdoms of the world his royaldignity. he governed long and wisely, extending his dominions to the vast regions of the west(apparently making himself lord of all italy),
and by his wife hildeswide becoming the fatherof two sons, whose names were hermanric and dietmar. after twenty years of wise and peaceful rule,as samson sat feasting in his palace he began to lament the decay of energy in himself andhis warriors, and to fear that his name and fame would perish after his death. he thereforeresolved on war with elsung, earl of verona, and to that end despatched six ambassadorswith this insulting message: "send hither thy daughter to be the concubine of my youngestson. send sixty damsels with her, and sixty noble youths each bringing two horses anda servant. send sixty hawks and sixty retrievers, whose collars shall be of pure gold, and letthe leash with which they are bound be made
of hairs out of thine own white beard. dothis, or in three months prepare for war". this insolent demand produced the expectedresult. elsung ordered the leader of the embassy to be hung. four of his companions were beheaded.the sixth, having had his right hand lopped off, was sent back with no other answer tosalerno. when he reached that city, samson appeared to treat the matter as of no importanceand went on with his hunting and hawking and all the amusements of a peaceful court. hewas, however, quietly making his preparations for war, and at the end of three months, atthe head of an army of 15,000 men, commanded by three under-kings and many dukes he burstinto the territories of earl elsung who had only 10,000 men, drawn from hungary and elsewhere,with whom to meet his powerful foe. there
was great slaughter on the battle-plain. thenthe two chiefs met in single combat. elsung inflicted a wound on samson, but samson cutoff elsung's head and clutching it by the hoary locks exhibited it in triumph to hismen. the utter rout of the veronese army followed. samson went in state to verona, received thesubmission of the citizens and laid hands on the splendid treasure of earl elsung. hethen celebrated with great pomp the marriage of odilia, the daughter of the slain earl,to his second son dietmar, whom he made lord of verona and all the territory which hadbeen elsung's. he marched next toward "romaborg" (rome) intending to make his eldest son, hermanric,lord of that city, but died on the journey. hermanric, however, after many battles withthe romans achieved the desired conquest,
and became lord of romaborg and the countryround it, even to the hellespont and the isles of greece. dietmar, son of samson, king of verona, wasbrave, prudent, and greatly loved by the folk over whom he ruled. his wife odilia was oneof the wisest of women. their eldest son was named theodoric, and he, when full grown,though not one of the race of giants, surpassed all ordinary men in stature. his face wasoval, of comely proportions; he had gray eyes, with black brows above them; his hair wasof great beauty, long and thick and ending in ruddy curls. he never wore a beard. hisshoulders were two ells broad; his arms were as thick as the trunk of a tree and as hardas a stone. he had strong, well-proportioned
hands. the middle of his body was of a gracefultapering shape, but his loins and hips were wondrously strong; his feet beautiful andwell-proportioned; his thighs of enormous bigness. his strength was much beyond theordinary strength of men. the size of theodoric's body was equalled by the qualities of hismind. he was not only brave but jovial, good-tempered, liberal, magnificent, always ready to bestowgold and silver and all manner of precious things on his expectant friends. it was thesaying of some that the young warrior was like his grandfather, samson; but others heldthat there was never any one in the world to compare unto theodoric. when he had attainedthe fifteenth year of his age he was solemnly created a knight by his father, dietmar.
now, while theodoric was still a child therecame to his father's court one who was to have a great influence on his after life.this was hildebrand, commonly called master hildebrand, son of one of the dukes of venice.he was a brave knight and a mighty one, and when he had reached the age of thirty he toldhis father that he would fain see more of the world than he could do by lingering allhis days at venice. upon which his father recommended him to try his fortune at thecourt of dietmar, king of verona. he came therefore and was received very graciouslyby dietmar, who conferred great favours upon him and assigned to him the care of the youngtheodoric then about seven years of age. hildebrand taught theodoric all knightly exercises; togetherthey ever rode to war, and the friendship
which grew up between them was strong as thatwhich knit the soul of david to the soul of jonathan. one day when theodoric and hildebrand werehunting in the forest, a little dwarf ran across their path, to which theodoric gavechase. this dwarf proved to be alpris, the most thievish little creature in the world.theodoric was about to kill it, but alpris said: "if you will spare my life i will getyou the finest sword that ever was made, and will show you where to find more treasurethan ever your father owned. they belong to a little woman called hildur and her husbandgrimur. he is so strong that he can fight twelve men at once, but she is much strongerthan he, and you will need all your strength
if you mean to overcome them". having boundhimself by tremendous oaths to perform these promises, the dwarf was dismissed unhurt,and the two comrades went on with their hunting. at evening they stood beside the rock wherealpris was to meet them. the dwarf brought the sword, and pointed out the entrance toa cave. the two knights gazed upon the sword with wonder, agreeing that they had neverseen anything like it in the world. and no marvel, for this was the famous sword nagelring,the fame whereof went out afterwards into the whole world. they tied up their horsesand went together into the cave. grimur, seeing strangers, at once challenged them to fight;but looking round anxiously for nagelring, he missed it, whereupon he cursed the knavishalpris, who had assuredly stolen it from him.
however, he snatched from the hearth the blazingtrunk of a tree and therewith attacked theodoric. meanwhile hildebrand, taken at unawares, wascaught hold of by hildur, who clung so tightly round his neck that he could not move. aftera long struggle they both fell heavily to the ground, hildebrand below, hildur on topof him. she squeezed his arms so tightly that the blood came out at his finger-nails; shepressed her fist so hard on his throat and breast that he could hardly breathe. he wasfain to cry for help to theodoric, who answered that he would do all in his power to savehis faithful friend and tutor from the clutches of that foul little wench. with that he swunground nagelring and smote off the head of grimur. then he hastened to his foster-father'said and cut hildur in two, but so mighty was
the power of her magic that the sundered halvesof her body came together again. once more theodoric clove her in twain; once more thesevered parts united. hereupon quoth hildebrand: "stand between the sundered limbs with yourbody bowed and your head averted, and the monster will be overcome". so did theodoric,once more cleaving her body in twain and then standing between the pieces. one half diedat once, but that to which the head belonged was heard to say: "if the fates had willedthat grimur should fight theodoric as toughly as i fought hildebrand, the victory had beenours". with these words the brave little woman died. hildebrand congratulated his pupil on hisglorious victory, and they then proceeded
to despoil the cave of its treasures. oneof the chief of these was a helmet of wonderful strength, the like of which theodoric hadnever seen before. it was made by the dwarf malpriant, and so greatly had the strangecouple prized it that they had given it their united names hildegrimur. this helmet guardedtheodoric's head in many a fierce encounter, and by its help and that of the sword nagelringhe gained many a victory. bright was the renown which he won from this deed of arms. so great was the fame of the young hero thatstriplings from distant lands, thirsting for glory, came to dietmar's court that they mightbe enrolled among the comrades of theodoric. there were twelve of these who, when theycame to manhood, were especially distinguished
as the chiefs of his army, and among thesetheodoric shone pre-eminent, even as his contemporary, arthur, king of bertangenland, among the knightsof his table round. but there were two of these comrades, friendlyto theodoric, though by no means friendly to one another, who were more renowned thanany of the rest for their knightly deeds and strange adventures. these were witig and heime,each of whom, having first fought with theodoric, was afterwards for many years his loyal anddevoted knight. heime was the son of a great horse-breederwho dwelt north of the mountains, and whose name was studas. he was short and squat offigure and square of face, but was all made for strength; and he was churlish and moroseof disposition, wherefore men called him heime
(which was the name of a strong and venomousserpent), instead of studas, which was of right his name as well as his father's. oneday heime, having mounted his famous grey horse rispa, and girded on his good swordblutgang, announced to his father that he would ride southward over the mountains toverona, and there challenge theodoric to a trial of strength. studas tried to dissuadehis son, telling him that his presumption would cost him his life; but heime answered:"thy life and thy calling are base and inglorious, and i would rather die than plod on in thisignoble round. but, moreover, i think not to fall by the hand of theodoric. he is scarcetwelve winters old, and i am sixteen; and where is the man with whom i need fear tofight?" so heime rode over the rough mountain
ways, and appearing in the court-yard of thepalace at verona, challenged theodoric to fight. indignant at the challenge, but confidentof victory, theodoric went forth to the encounter, having donned his iron shoes, his helmet andcoat of mail, and taking his great thick shield, red as blood, upon which a golden lion ramped,and above all, his good sword nagelring. the young heroes fought at first on horseback,and in this encounter, though theodoric's spear pierced heime's shield and inflictedupon him a slight wound, a stumble of his horse had nearly brought him to the ground.but then, as both spears were shivered, the combatants sprang from their horses, wavedhigh their swords, and continued the fight on foot. at last heime dealt theodoric a swashingblow on his head, but the good helmet hildegrimur
was so strong that it shivered the sword blutgangto pieces, and there stood heime helpless, at the mercy of the boy whom he had challenged.theodoric gladly spared his life, and received him into the number of his henchmen, and afterthat they were for many years sworn friends. it was some time after this that another youngman appeared at verona and challenged theodoric to single combat. this was witig, the dane,son of that mighty worker in iron, wieland, who had in his veins the blood of kings andof mysterious creatures of the deep, but who spent all his days in his smithy, forgingstrange weapons, and whose wrongs and terrible revenges and marvellous escapes from deathare sung by all the minstrels of the north. when he was twelve years old, witig, drawnlike so many other brave youths by the renown
of the young theodoric, announced to his fatherthat he was determined to seek glory in the land of the amelungs. wieland would fain havehad him stay in the smithy and learn his own wealth-bringing craft; but witig swore bythe honour of his mother, a king's daughter, that never should the smith's hammer and tongscome into his hand. thereupon wieland gave him a coat of mail of hard steel, which shonelike silver, and greaves of chain-armour; a white shield, on which were painted in redthe smith's hammer and tongs, telling of his father's trade, and three carbuncles, whichhe bore in right of the princess, his mother. on his strong steel helmet a golden dragongleamed and seemed to spit forth venom. into his son's right hand wieland gave the wondroussword mimung, which he had fashioned for a
cruel king, and which was so sharp that itcut through a flock of wool, three feet thick, when floating on the water. witig's mothergave him three golden marks and her gold ring, and he kissed his father and his mother andwished them a happy life, and they wished him a prosperous journey and were sore atheart when he turned to go. but he grasped his spear and sprang into thesaddle, all armed as he was, without touching the stirrup. then wieland's face grew brightagain, and he walked long by the side of his son's horse and gave him full knowledge ofthe road he must take. so they parted, father and son, and witig rode upon his way. long before he reached verona he had met withmany adventures, especially one in which he
overcame twelve robbers who held a strongcastle by a bridge and were wont to take toll of travellers. these robbers seeing witigdraw nigh parted among them in anticipation his armour and his horse, and planned alsoto maim him, cutting off his right hand and right foot, but with the good sword mimunghe slew two of them and was fighting valiantly with the rest when certain knights whom hehad before met on the road came to his help, and between them they slew seven of the robbersand put the others to flight. these knights were hildebrand and heime, and a strangerwhom they were escorting to the court of verona. heime, who was already jealous of witig'spower and prowess, had sought to dissuade his companions from going to his help; buthildebrand refused to do so unknightly a deed
as to let their road-companion be overpoweredby ruffians before their very eyes without giving him succour. so now, the victory beingwon and witig having displayed his might, they all made themselves known unto him. hildebrandswore "brotherhood in arms" with witig, but having heard of his determination to challengetheodoric to single combat, secretly by night changed the sword mimung for one less finelytempered. for he feared for his young lord's life if that sword, wielded by witig's stronghand, should ever descend upon theodoric's helmet. at length the wayfarers all entered the gatesof verona. great was theodoric's joy to behold again the good master hildebrand; but greatwas his indignation when the young dane, who
came with hildebrand, challenged him to singlecombat. said theodoric: "in my father's land and mine i will establish such peace thatit shall not be permitted to every rover and rascal to come into it and challenge me tothe duel". hildebrand: "thou sayest not rightly, my lord,nor knowest of whom thou speakest. this is no rover nor rascal, but a brave man; andin sooth i know not whether thou wilt get the victory over him". then interrupted reinald, a follower of theodoric:"that were in truth, my lord, a great offence that every upstart urchin in thine own landshould come and challenge thee to the fight". hildebrand: "thou shalt not assail my journey-companionwith any such abusive words".
and thereat he dealt reinald such a blow withhis fist on his ear that he fell senseless to the ground. then said theodoric: "i seethou art determined to be this man's friend; but thou shalt see how much good that doeshim. this very day he shall be hung up yonder outside the gates of verona". hildebrand: "if he becomes thy prisoner, afteryou have both tried your might, i will not complain however hard thy decision may seemto me; but he is still unbound, and i think thou hast a hard day's work before thee, erethou becomest lord of his fate". theodoric in a rage called for his horse andarmour and rode, followed by a long train of courtiers, to the place of tourney outsidethe walls of verona, where witig and hildebrand,
with few companions, were awaiting him. witigsate, arrayed in full armour, on his horse, battle-ready and stately to look upon. thenheime gave theodoric a bowl of wine and said: "drink, my lord, and may god give thee thevictory". theodoric drank and gave back the bowl. likewise hildebrand offered a bowl towitig, who said: "take it to theodoric and pray him to drink to me from it". but theodoricin his rage refused to touch the bowl that witig was to drink from. then said hildebrand:"thou knowest not the man with whom thou art so enraged, but thou wilt find him a truehero and not the good-for-nothing fellow thou hast called him to-day". then he gave witigthe bowl and said: "drink now, and then defend thyself with all manhood and bravery, andmay god give thee his succour". and witig
drank and gave it back to hildebrand, andwith it the gold ring of his mother, saying: "god reward thee for thy true help-bringing". of the fierce battle between the two heroeswhich now followed it were too long to tell the tale. they fought first on horseback,then they fought on foot. witig dealt a mighty blow with his sword at theodoric's helmet,but the helmet hildegrimur was too strong for the sword which hildebrand had put inthe place of mimung, and which now was shivered into two pieces. "ah, wieland!" cried witigin vexation, "god's wrath be on thee for fashioning this sword so ill! if i had had a good sword,i had this day proved myself a hero; but now shame and loss are mine and his who forgedmy weapon".
then theodoric took the sword nagelring withboth his hands and was about to cut off witig's head. but hildebrand stepped in between andbegged theodoric to spare witig's life and take him for a comrade, telling of his bravedeeds against the twelve robbers, and declaring that never would theodoric have a more valiantor loyal follower than this man, who was of kingly blood on both his father's and mother'sside, and was now willing to become theodoric's man. but theodoric, still indignant at beingchallenged, as he deemed, by a son of a churl, said sullenly: "no; the dog shall hang, asi said he should, before the gates of verona". then hildebrand, seeing that nought else wouldavail, and that theodoric heeded not good counsel, drew mimung from the scabbard andgave it to witig, saying: "for the sake of
the brotherhood in arms which we swore whenwe met upon the journey, i give thee here thy sword mimung. take it and defend thyselflike a knight". then was witig joyous as a bird at daybreak. he kissed the golden-hiltedsword and said: "may god forgive me for the reproach which i hurled at my father, wieland.see! theodoric, noble hero! see! here is mimung. now am i joyous for the fight with thee asa thirsty man for drinking, or a hungry hound for feeding". then he rained on theodoricblow on blow, hacking away now a piece of his coat of mail, now a splinter from hishelmet. theodoric, bleeding from five great wounds, and thinking only now of defence,never of attack, called on master hildebrand to end the combat; but hildebrand, still soreat heart because theodoric seemed to accuse
him of lying when he called witig a hero,told him that he might now expect to receive from the conqueror the same disgraceful doomwhich he in his arrogance and cruelty had adjudged to the conquered. then king dietmar came and besought witigto spare his son's life, offering him a castle and an earl's rank and a noble wife; but witigspurned his gifts, and told him that it would be an unkingly deed if he, by his multitudeof men-at-arms, stayed the single combat which was turning against his son. so, after thesewords, they renewed the fight; and now, by a mighty blow from the good sword mimung,even the stout helmet was cloven asunder from right to left, and the golden hair of theodoricstreamed out of the fissure. with that hildebrand
relented, and springing between the twain,begged witig, for the sake of the brotherhood that was sworn between them, to give peaceto theodoric and take him for his comrade--and when you two shall stand side by side therewill be none in the world that can stand against you". "though he deserves it not", said witig,"yet since thou askest it, and for our brotherhood's sake, i grant him his life". then they laid their weapons aside and claspedone another's hands, and became good friends and comrades. so they rode back to verona,and were all merry together. many days lay theodoric at verona, for hiswounds in the fight were grevious. at length he rode forth on his good steed falke, inquest of adventures, to brighten again his
honour which was tarnished by the victoryof witig. after many days he reached a certain forest which was near the castle of drachenfels.through that forest, as he was told, there was wont to wander a knight named ecke, whowas betrothed to the chatelaine of drachenfels, a widowed queen with nine fair daughters.having heard of the might of the unconquered ecke, theodoric, who was still somewhat weakenedby his wounds, thought to pass through the forest by night and so avoid an encounter.but as luck would have it, the two knights met in the thick wood where neither couldsee the other, and ecke, having called upon the unseen traveller to reveal his name, andfinding that it was theodoric, tempted him to single combat by every taunt and lure thathe could think of, by sneering at him for
witig's victory and by praising his own goodsword ecke-sax, made in the same smithy as nagelring, gold-hilted and gold-inlaid, sothat when you held it downwards a serpent of gold seemed to run along the blade fromthe handle to the point. neither this temptation nor yet that of the twelve pounds of ruddygold in ecke's girdle prevailed on theodoric, who said again and again: "i will fight theegladly when day dawns, but not here in the darkness, where neither of us can see hisfoe". but when ecke began to boast of the stately queen, his betrothed, and of the nineprincesses who had armed him for the fight, said theodoric: "in heaven's name i will fightthee, not for gold nor for thy wondrous sword, but for glory and for the prize of those ninefair daughters of a king". then they struck
their swords against the stones in the road,and by the light of the sparks they closed on one another. shield was locked in shield,the weapons clashed, the roar of their battle was like the roar of a thunderstorm, but orever either had wounded his foe, they fell to the ground, ecke above, theodoric below,"now, if thou wouldst save thy life", said ecke, "thou shalt let me bind thee, and takethy armour and thy steed, and thou shalt come with me to the castle, and there will i showthee bound to the princesses who equipped me for this encounter". "rather will i die",said theodoric "than be made mock of by these nine princesses and their mother, and by allwho shall hereafter see or hear of me". then he struggled, and got his hands free, andclutched ecke round the neck, and so they
wrestled to and fro upon the turf in the darkforest. but meanwhile the good steed falke, hearing his master in distress, bit in twothe bridle by which theodoric had fastened him to a tree, and ran to where the two knightslay struggling on the earth. stamping with his forefeet, with all his might, upon ecke,falke broke his spine. then sprang theodoric to his feet, and drawing his sword he cutoff the head of his foe. equipping himself in ecke's arms he rode forth from the forestat daybreak, and drew near to the castle of drachenfels. the queen, standing on the topof her tower, and seeing a man clad in ecke's armour approach, riding a noble war-horse,called to her daughters: "come hither and rejoice. ecke went forth on foot, but he ridesback on a noble steed. doubtless he has slain
some knight in single combat". then the queenand all her daughters, dressed in their goodliest raiment, went forth to meet the conqueror.but when they came nearer and saw that the arms of ecke were borne by an unknown stranger,they read the battle more truly. then the queen sank to the ground in a swoon, and thenine fair princesses went back to the castle and put on robes of mourning, and told themen-at-arms to ride forth and avenge their champion. so theodoric perceived that theprincesses were not for him, and rode away from the castle. now, ecke had one brother named fasold, andthis man had bound himself by a vow never to smite more than one blow at any who cameagainst him in battle. but so doughty a champion
was he that this one blow had till now beensufficient for every antagonist. when fasold saw theodoric come riding through the woodtowards him he cried out: "art thou not my brother ecke?" theodoric: "another am i, and not thy brother". fasold: "base death-dog! thou hast stolenon my brother ecke in his sleep and murdered him; for when he was awake thou hadst neverovercome that strifeful hero". theodoric: "thou liest there. he forced me,to fight for honour's sake and for the sake of his betrothed and the nine fair princesses,her daughters. but a brave man truly he was, and had i known how great a warrior i wouldnever have ventured to match myself against
him". then fasold rushed at theodoric with drawnsword, and dealt a terrible blow upon his helmet, which stunned theodoric and stretchedhim senseless on the ground. remembering his vow, fasold then turned away and rode towardsthe castle. before long, however, theodoric's soul returnedinto him, and springing on his horse he rode furiously after fasold, and with tauntingwords provoked him to the fight, declaring that he was a "nithing" if he would not avengehis brother. with that fasold turned back, and the two heroes leaping from their horsesbegan the fight on foot. it was a long and terrible combat, but it began to turn againstfasold. he had received five grievous wounds,
while theodoric had but three, and of a slighterkind. perceiving, therefore, that the longer the fight lasted the more certain he was tobe at last slain, and as to each man his own life is most precious, this great and valianthero begged his life of theodoric, and offered to become his henchman. "peace i will havewith thee", said theodoric, "but not thy service, seeing that thou art so noble a knight, andthat i have slain thy brother. on this one condition will i grant thee thy life, thatthou wilt clasp my hand and swear brotherhood in arms with me, that each of us shall helpthe other in all time of his need as if we were born brothers, and that all men shallknow us for loyal comrades". fasold gladly took the oath, and they mounted their horsesand rode together towards verona.
on their road they met a mighty beast whichis called an elephant. theodoric, in spite of fasold's dissuading words, persisted inattacking it, but failed, even with the good sword ecke-sax, to reach any vital part. thenwas he in great danger; nor would the help which fasold loyally rendered have availedhim much, for the huge beast was trampling him under its great forefeet; but the faithfulsteed falke again broke its bridle and came to the help of its master. the fierce kickswhich it gave the elephant in its side called off its attention from theodoric, who oncemore getting hold of ecke-sax, stabbed the elephant in the belly, and sprang nimbly fromunder it before it fell down dead. riding some way from thence and emerging froma wood, the two comrades saw a vast dragon
flying through the air at no great distancefrom the ground. it had long and sharp claws, a huge and terrible head, and from its mouthprotruded the head and hands of an armed and still living knight whom it had half swallowedand was attempting to carry off. the unhappy victim called on them for help, and they struckthe dragon with their swords, but its hide was hard, and fasold's sword was blunt, andonly theodoric's sword availed aught against it, "mine is sharper", cried the captive,but it is inside the creature's mouth. use it, if you can, for my deliverance". thenthe valiant fasold rushed up and plucked the knight's sword from out of the jaws of thedragon. "strike carefully", said the captive, "that i be not wounded by mine own sword,for my legs are inside the creature's mouth".
even so did they. both fasold and theodoricstruck deft blows and soon killed the dragon, by whose dead body the three heroes stoodon the green turf. they asked the liberated knight of his name and lineage, and he turnedout to be sintram, grandson of bertram, duke of venice, and cousin of good master hildebrand,and then on his way to verona to visit his kinsman and to take service under theodoric. eleven days and eleven nights had he beenriding, and at length being weary had laid him down to rest, when that foul monster stoleupon him in his sleep, and first robbing him of his shield, had then opened its mouth toswallow him up and bear him away. then theodoric made himself known to sintram,who pleaded earnestly that his faithful sword
might be restored to him. great was the joywhen the heroes were made known one to another. and so sintram became one of theodoric's henchmen,and served him long and faithfully. thus passed the youth of theodoric-- "when every morning brought a noble chance. and every chance brought out a noble knight". ere many years were gone king dietmar died,having scarcely reached middle age, and theodoric succeeded him in the kingdom. and he was themost renowned amongst princes; his fame spread wide and far over the whole world, and hisname will abide and never be forgotten in all the lands of the south so long as theworld shall endure. after he had reigned some
years, he willed to marry, and having heardof the fame of the beautiful princess hilda, daughter of arthur, king of britain, he senthis sister's son, herbart, to ask for the maiden's hand. king arthur liked not thattheodoric should not have come himself to urge his suit, and he would not suffer herbartto have speech of the princess; but herbart, who was a goodly youth and a brave knight,pleased arthur well, and he kept him at his court and made him his seneschal. now thelady hilda was so closely guarded that no stranger might see her face. she never walkedabroad, except when she went to the church, and then twelve counts walked on either sideholding up her girdle, and twelve monks followed after, bearing her train, and twelve greatearls, in coats of mail, with helmet and sword
and shield, brought up the rear, and lookedterrible things on any man who should be bold enough to try to speak with her. and overher head was a canopy, in which the plumes of two great peacocks shielded her beautifulface from the rays of the sun. thus went the lady hilda to the place of prayer. now herbart had waited many days, and hadnever caught sight of the princess; but at length there was a great church festival,and she went, thus magnificently attended, to perform her devotions. but neither on theroad nor yet in the church could herbart see her face. but he had prepared two mice, oneadorned with gold and one with silver, and he took out first one and then the other,and they ran to where the princess was sitting.
each time she looked up to see the mouse running,and each time he saw her beautiful face, and she saw that he beheld her, and signals passedbetween them. then she sent her maid to ask him of his name and parentage, and he said:"i am herbart, nephew of theodoric of verona, and i crave an interview, that i may tellmine errand to thy mistress". when they met outside the church porch, he had only timeto ask the princess to arrange that he might have longer speech of her, when a monk, oneof her twelve watchers, came by and asked him how he, a foreigner, could be so boldas to speak with the princess. but herbart took the monk by the beard and shook him soviolently that all his teeth rattled, and told him that he would teach him once forall how to behave to strangers.
that evening the princess asked her fatherat the banquet to let her have whatever she should desire, and he, for his heart was merrywith wine, consented to her prayer. then she asked that herbart, his handsome seneschal,might be her servant, and king arthur, though loath to part with him, for his honour's sakegranted her request. thereupon herbart sent back half of the knights who had accompaniedhim from verona to tell theodoric that he had seen hilda and spoken with her, and thatshe was the fairest of women. glad at heart was theodork when he heard these tidings. and now herbart had speech often with hismistress, and began to tell her of his errand and to urge his uncle's suit. but she said,"what manner of man is theodoric of verona?"
"greatest of all heroes", said herbart, "andkindest and most generous of men; and if thou wilt be his wedded wife thou shalt have nolack of gold or silver or jewels". she said, "canst thou draw his face upon this wall?""yea", answered he, "and so that every one seeing it would say, 'that is the face ofking theodoric.'" then he drew a great, grim face on the wall, and said: "lady, that ishe; only, god help me! he is far more terrible-looking than that". thereupon she thought, "god cannotbe so wroth with me as to destine me for that monster". and she looked up and said, "sir!why dost thou ask for my hand for theodoric, of verona, and not for thyself?" he answered:"i was bound to fulfil the message of my lord; but if thou wilt have me, who am of the seedof kings, though i am not a king myself, gladly
will i be thy husband, and neither king arthurnor king theodoric nor all their men shall part us twain". so the two plighted troth to one another,herbart and hilda: and watching their opportunity they stole away on horseback from the castle.king arthur sent after them thirty knights and thirty squires, with orders to slay herbartand to bring hilda back again; but herbart defended himself like a hero, killing twelveknights and fourteen squires: and the rest fled back to the castle. herbart, though sorewounded, mounted his steed and escaped with his wife to the dominions of a certain king,who received him graciously, and made him duke, and gave him broad lands. and he becamea great warrior and did mighty deeds.
after this theodoric married the eldest ofthe nine fair princesses of drachenfels, for the love of whom he had fought with the strongman ecke. the name of theodoric's wife was gudelinda. two of her sisters were marriedto two of theodoric's men, namely, to fasold, and the merry rogue and stout warrior, dietleib,whose laughter-moving adventures i have here no room to chronicle. and the mother, bolfriana,who was fairest of all the race, was wooed and won by witig. but this marriage, whichtheodoric furthered with all his power, brought ill with it in the end and the separationof tried friends. for, in order to marry bolfriana and receive the lordship of her domains, witigwas obliged to enter hermanric's service and become his man. and though hermanric promotedhim to great honour and made him a count,
this was but a poor amends for the necessitywhich, as you shall soon hear, lay upon witig, to lift up his sword against his former master. now, hermanric, as has been said, was sovereignlord of rome and of many other fair lands beside: and all kings and dukes to the southof the great mountains served him, and, as it seems, even theodoric himself owned himas over-lord, and he was by far the greatest potentate in the south of europe. for theemperor himself then ruled only over bulgaria and greece, while king hermanric's dominionsincluded all that lay west of the sea of adria. till this time theodoric and his uncle, hermanric,had been good friends. the young hero had visited the older one at romaborg, and theyhad fought side by side against their enemies.
but now came a disastrous change, which madetheodoric a wanderer from his home for many years; and this was all the work of that falsetraitor, hermanric's chief counsellor, sibich. for sibich's honour as a husband had beenstained by his lord while he himself was absent on an embassy; but instead of avenging himselfwith his own right hand on the adulterous king, he planned a cruel and wide-reachingscheme of vengeance which should embrace all the kindred of the wrong-doer. of hermanric'sthree sons he caused that the eldest should be sent on an embassy to wilkina-land demandingtribute from the king of that country, and should be slain there by an accomplice; thatthe second should be sent on a like embassy to england, and sailing in a leaky ship, shouldbe swallowed up by the waves; and that the
youngest should be slain by his father ina fit of rage provoked by the slanderous accusations of sibich. then he set hermanric against hisnephews, the harlungs, sons of his half-brother, akã©; and these hapless young men were besiegedin their rhine-land castle, to which hermanric set fire, and issuing forth, sword in hand,that they might not die like rats in a hole, were captured and hung by their enraged uncleon the highest tree in their own domains. so was all the family of hermanric destroyedexcept theodoric and his young brother diether: and against theodoric sibich now began toply his engines of calumny. he represented to hermanric that theodoric's kingdom hadfor some time been growing large, while his own had been growing smaller, and hinted thatsoon theodoric would openly attack his uncle.
meanwhile, and in order to test his peaceabledisposition, hermanric, by sibich's advice, claimed that he should pay him tribute foramalungen-land. when theodoric refused to do this hermanric was persuaded of the truthof sibich's words, and declared that theodoric also should be hanged, "for right well doboth he and i know which of us is the mightier". witig and heime, who were now at hermanric'scourt, when they heard these wrathful words, tried in vain to abate the fury of the kingand to open his eyes to sibich's falseness; but as they availed nothing, they mountedtheir horses and rode with all speed to verona. at midnight they reached the city and toldtheodoric the evil tidings, that on the next day hermanric would burst upon him with overwhelmingforce determined to slay him. then theodoric
went into his great hall of audience and badethe horns blow to summon all his counsellors and men of war to a meeting there in the deadof night. he told them all the tidings that witig had brought and asked their counsel,whether it were better to stay in verona and die fighting--for of successful resistanceto such a force there was no hope--or to bow for a while to the storm and fleeing fromthe home-land seek shelter at some foreign court. master hildebrand advised, and allwere of his opinion, that it was better to flee, and that with all speed, before morningdawned. scarcely had hildebrand's words been spoken, when there arose a great sound oflamentation in verona, women and children bewailing that their husbands and fatherswere about to leave them, brothers parting
from brothers and friends from friends. andwith all this, in the streets the neighing of horses, and the clank of arms, as the warriors,hastily aroused, prepared themselves for their midnight march. so theodoric, with the knights his companions,rode away from verona, which hermanric entered next morning with five thousand men. and theodoricrode first to bacharach on the rhine, where dwelt the great margrave, rudiger, who washis trusty friend. and from thence he rode on to susat, where was the palace of attila,king of the huns. and when attila heard that theodoric was coming, he bade his men blowthe great horns, and with all his chieftains he poured forth to welcome him and do himhonour. so theodoric tarried in the palace
of attila, a cherished and trusted guest,and there he abode many years. now king attila had long wars to wage withhis neighbours on the north and east of hun-land. these were three brothers, mighty princes,osantrix, king of wilkina-land (norway and sweden) whose daughter attila had married,and waldemai, king of russia and poland, and ilias, earl of greece, with all attila wagedwar, but longest and hardest with waldemar. and in all these encounters theodoric andhis amalung knights were ever foremost in the fray and last to retreat, whilst attilaand his huns fled often early from the battle-field, leaving the amalungs surrounded by their foes.thus, once upon a time, theodoric and master hildebrand, with five hundred men, were surroundedin a fortress in the heart of russia: and
they suffered dire famine ere king attila,earnestly entreated, came to their rescue. and master hildebrand said to the good knight,rudiger, who had been foremost in pressing on to deliver them, "i am now an hundred yearsold and never have i been in such sore need as this day. we had five hundred men and fivehundred horses, and seven only of the horses are left which we have not killed and eaten". in this campaign theodoric took prisoner hisnamesake, theodoric, the son of waldemar, and handed him over into the keeping of hisgood host and ally, king attila. by him the captive was at first thrown into a drearydungeon, and no care was taken of his many wounds. but erka, the queen of the huns, whowas a cousin of theodoric, son of waldemar,
besought her husband that she might be allowedto take him out of prison and bring him to the palace and heal his wounds. "if he ishealed, he will certainly escape", said attila. "if i may only heal him", said erka, "i willput my life on the hazard that he shall not escape". "be it so", said attila, who wasgoing on another campaign into fat russia: "if when i return i find that the son of waldemarhas escaped, doubt not that i will strike off thy head". then attila rode forth to war, and erica commandedthat theodoric, the son of waldemar, should be brought into the palace, and every dayshe had dainty dishes set before him, and provided him with warm baths, and delightedhis soul with gifts of jewels. but theodoric
of verona, who was also sore wounded, wasleft under the care of an ignorant and idle nurse, and his wounds were not tended, andwere like to become gangrened. so before many days were passed, the son of waldemar wasagain whole, and clothed him with his coat and greaves of mail and put his shining helmeton his head, and mounted his horse and rode from the palace. queen erka implored him tostay, saying that her head was the pledge of his abiding; but he answered that he hadbeen all too long already in hun-land, and would ride forth to his own country. thenthe queen, in her terror and despair, sought theodoric of verona, where he lay in his ungarnishedchamber with his gangrened wounds; and he, though he could not forbear to reproach herfor her little kindness to him, and though
his wounds made riding grievous and fightingwell-nigh impossible, yet yielded to her prayers and tears, and rode forth after the son ofwaldemar. striking spurs into the good steed falke, he rode fast and far, and came up atlength with the fugitive. "return", he cried, "for the life's sake of thy cousin, erka;and she and i together will reconcile thee to attila, and i will give thee silver andgold". but waldemar's son utterly refused to return and to be reconciled with eitherof his enemies, and scoffed at the foul wounds of his namesake. "if thou wilt not returnfor silver and gold, nor to save the life of thy cousin, erka, thou shalt stay for thineown honour's sake, for i challenge thee here to combat; and never shalt thou be calledaught but a 'nithing' if thou ridest away
when challenged by one wounded man". at thesewords the son of waldemar had no choice but to stay and fight. the battle was long anddesperate, and once both champions, sore weary, leaned upon their shields and rested a space,while he of verona in vain renewed to the son of waldemar his offers of peace and friendship;but the combat began again with fury, and at last, with one mighty sword-stroke, theodoricof verona struck the right side of the neck of the other theodoric so that his head rolledoff on the left side, and the victor rode back to susat with that trophy at his saddle-bow.queen erka, when her cousin's head was thrown by theodoric at her feet, wept and bitterlylamented that so many of her kindred should lose their lives for her sake.
at length, after many days, theodoric washealed of his wounds, and went with attila on one more expedition into russia, in thecourse of which they took the cities of smolensko and pultowa, and theodoric slew king waldemaron the battle-field. and now had theodoric been twenty wintersin hun-land. he had fought in many great battles, and had gained broad lands for his host-friend,attila. his young brother, diether, who had been brought as a babe from verona, had growninto a goodly stripling; and the two sons of attila, erp and ortwin, who had grown upwith him, loved him as a brother; and erka, their mother, loved diether as her own son.great, too, was the reverence shown to theodoric, who sat at the high-seat by the side of attila,and was honoured as his chief counsellor and
friend. but theodoric's heart pined for his home andhis lost kingdom, and one day he sought the presence of queen erka and poured out thelongings of his soul. "good friend, theodoric", said she, "i will be the first to aid theein thine endeavour. i will send with thee my two sons, erp and ortwin, and a thousandwell-armed knights. and now will i seek attila, my lord, and adjure him to help thee". attilaat first took it ill that theodoric came not himself to urge his suit, but when erka hadpersuaded him that it was not from pride but from modesty that he made the request throughher, and when she said that she was willing to send her own sons into danger for his sake,attila gladly yielded, and bade his trusty
friend rudiger, with a body of chosen knights,accompany theodoric and his exiled followers back to their own land. then queen erka called her two sons to herand showed them the coats of mail and the greaves of mail, bright as silver and of hardeststeel, but embellished with ruddy gold, and the helmets and the thick red shields thatshe had prepared for their first day of battle. "now be brave", said she, weeping, "oh, fairsons of mine, even as your arms are strong: for great as is my longing that you returnin safety to my embraces, i long yet more that all men should say that you bore yourselvesas brave men and heroes in the fight". and then she armed diether in like manner, andsaid: "dear foster-son, behold here my sons
erp and ortwin, whom i have armed for warto help thee and theodoric in the recovery of your kingdom. you three youths, who arenow here, have loved one another so dearly that never were you in any game in which youcould not be on the same side and give one another help. now you ride forth to war forthe first time: keep well together and help one another in this great game on which youare now entering". "may god help me, dear lady", said diether, "that i may bring backboth thy sons safe and sound; but if they fall in the storm of war, i will not liveto tell the tale". of the clang of iron and steel in all thearmourers' shops at susat, of the stillness which fell upon the shouting host when attila,from a high tower, gave his orders to the
army, of the setting forth of the gallantband, ten thousand knights with many followers, it needs not to be told at length. enough,they crossed the mountains and entered the land that had been theirs; and theodoric,to take no unknightly advantage of his foe, sent messengers to rome to apprise hermanricof his coming and challenge him to battle outside the walls of ravenna. hermanric, too old to go forth himself towar, gave the chief command to the false counsellor, sibich. under him were reinald and witig,both of whom had been friends and comrades of theodoric in times past, and were mostunwilling to fight against him, though thirsting for battle with any number of huns. it wasappointed, therefore, that sibich, bearing
hermanric's banner, should fight against theodoricand his amalungs, reinald against the gallant rudiger, and witig against the two sons ofattila. the whole army of hermanric numbered seventeen thousand men. and now were the twoarmies drawn up on the opposite banks of a river, and it was the night before the battle.master hildebrand, desiring to learn the position of the enemy, rode some way up the streamtill he found a ford by which he crossed to the other side. it was so dark that he hadalmost ridden up against another knight coming in the opposite direction, before either perceivedthe other. dark as it was they soon recognised one another by their voices, though they hadnot met for twenty years. the stranger was reinald, who had come forth on the same errandas hildebrand. no blows were fought; only
friendly words were exchanged, with lamentationsover this miserable war between the brother amalungs, and curses on the false sibich,whose intrigues had brought it to pass. then the moon shone forth, and reinald showed hildebrandfrom afar the great yellow tent with three golden tufts where the traitor sibich wassleeping; and the green tent with the silver tuft in which witig and his amalungs weredreaming of battle with the huns; and the black tent, then empty of its lord, that wasthe tent of reinald himself. and hildebrand told reinald the ordering of the troops oftheodoric, showing him theodoric's tent with five poles and a golden tuft, and the tentof the sons of attila, made of red silk with nine poles and nine tufts of gold; and thegreen tent of margrave rudiger. then the two
warriors kissed each other and wished oneanother well through the day of battle, and so they parted. and when reinald, returningto the camp, told whom he had met, sibich wished to send him to slay master hildebrandbefore he returned to his friends. but reinald would in no wise permit so unknightly a deed,saying that sibich must first slay him and all his friends ere such a thing should befall. when day dawned theodoric set forward hisarray and bade all his trumpets blow. they rode up the stream to the ford which hildebrandhad discovered the night before, and crossed thereby. and sibich and witig, seeing themapproach, sounded their trumpets and marshalled their men. theodoric, seeing the false sibich'sbanner waving, cried to his followers: "forward,
my men! strike this day with all your courageand knighthood. ye have striven often against the russians and the wilkina-men, and havemostly gotten the victory; but now in this strife we fight for our own land and realm,and for the deathless glory that will be ours if we win our land back again". then he spurredhis brave old steed falke through the thickest ranks of the enemy, raising ever and anonhis good sword ecke-sax and letting it fall, with every blow felling a warrior or his horseto the ground. likewise his brave standard-bearer wildeber, who went before him, hewed downthe ranks of the foe. against him came walter, sibich's standard-bearer, who rode in hero-moodtowards him, and aiming the banner-staff full against his breast, pierced him through, thestaff coming out through his shoulders. but
wildeber, though wounded to the death, loppedoff with his sword the end of the banner-staff, and then riding fiercely at walter struckhim on his thigh so terrible a blow that the sword cut right through the coat of mail andstuck fast in the saddle below. then did both the standard-bearers fall from their horsesand lie dead on the field side by side. when sibich saw his standard droop and thebrave knight walter fall, he turned his horse and fled from the field, and all his divisionof the army with him. theodoric and his men rode after them fast and far, and wroughtdire havoc among them, but when theodoric was miles away from the battle-plain he wasovertaken by one of his men, his horse all covered with foam, who brought him evil tidingsfrom another part of the field.
for witig, when he saw the flight of sibich,not terrified but all the more enraged, had ridden fiercely towards the place where thebanner of attila's sons was waving and had struck down their standard-bearer. "seestthou", said ortwin to helfric, his sworn henchman, "what evil that base dog, witig, is doing?he has slain our brave standard-bearer; let us ride up to him and stop his deadly work".so spake ortwin, but in the fierce fray that followed both he and his good comrade helfric,and then his brother erp, fell dead around witig and his standard-bearer. oh! then, greatwas the wrath of the young diether--who meanwhile had fought and killed the standard-bearerof witig--when he saw both of his foster-brothers slain. eager to avenge them, he struck oftand hard at witig's armour. "art thou diether,
king theodoric's brother?" cried witig; "forhis sake i am loth to do thee any hurt. ride away and fight with some other man". "sincemy young lords erp and ortwin are dead, and thou, base hound, hast slain them, i carenot for my life unless i can have thine". so said diether, and struck with all his mighton witig's helmet. the helmet, of hardest steel, resisted the blow, but the sword, glancingoff, descended on the neck of witig's war-horse, schimming, and severed its head from its body."god knows", cried witig, as he sprang to earth, "that i fight now but to save mineown life". and with that he grasped the handle of his sword mimung with both hands and struckdiether so terrible a blow that he clove his body in twain.
these were the tidings which the breathlessknight brought to theodoric and which stayed him in his pursuit of the fugitives. "ah!how have i sinned", said he "that so evil a day should come upon me? here am i untouchedby a wound, but my dearest brother is dead and my two young lords also. never may i nowreturn to hun-land, but here will i die or avenge them". and with that he turned andset spurs to falke and rode so swiftly that none of his men could keep up with him; andso full was he of rage and fury that a hot breath, like sparks of fire, came forth fromhis mouth, and no living man might dare to stand before him. and when he reached witig,who was riding diether's horse, his own being slain, witig, like all others turned to fleefrom that terrible countenance. "evil dog",
cried theodoric, "if thou hast any couragestand and wait till i come up to thee and avenge the death of my brother". "i slew himagainst my will". said witig, "and because i had no other way to save my life; and ifi can pay forfeit for his blood with any quantity of gold and silver, that will i gladly do".but still he fled as fast as his steed could carry him, down the course of a stream towhere it poured itself into a lake, and still theodoric rode after him. but when theodorichurled his spear, in that very moment witig sank beneath the waters of the lake and thespear-shaft was driven deep into the shore, and there it may be seen to this day. butsome men thought that witig was received by a mermaid and kept hidden in her cave formany days. for his grandfather had been born
long ago of this mermaid, having been begottenby wilkinus, king of norway. so the battle had been won by theodoric andhis allies (for in other parts of the field the margrave rudiger had vanquished reinald)yet was it a bootless victory by reason of the death of attila's sons. and theodoric,riding back to the battle-field, came where his brother diether was lying; and lamentedhim saying: "there liest thou; my brother diether. this is the greatest sorrow thathas befallen me, that thou art thus untimely slain". and then he came to the place wherelay the young princes, with their stout coats of mail and their strong helmets, which hadnot been able to save them from death, and he said: "dear young lords, this is the greatestof my sorrows that i have lost you; and how
shall i now return to susat? god knows thati would gladly have many a gaping wound, if only you might be whole again". then he baderudiger lead back the army to its king, for he would neither claim his own kingdom norreturn to the palace of susat, after he had cost attila the lives of so many brave knightsand of his own sons. so rudiger returned to the palace, but theodoric and master hildebranddwelt in a little hut in the neighbourhood of the city of susat. when rudiger stood in the presence of attila,who asked him of the welfare of theodoric and of the host, he made answer: "king theodoriclives, and the huns have been conquerors in the battle, yet have we had evil fortune,since we have lost the young lords, erp and
ortwin". then queen erka and almost all whowere in the palace-hall lifted up their voices and wept. and rudiger told attila how dietherand many another brave knight had fallen in the battle. but attila answered with steadfastsoul: "it has happened now as it ever does. they fall in the fight for whom it is so appointed,and neither mail nor muscle avails them anything. my sons erp and ortwin and their foster-brotherdiether had the best arms that could be fashioned in the smithy, yet there they all lie dead".and after a space he added: "where is my good friend, king theodoric?" "he and master hildebrandare sitting together in a mean hut, and they have laid their arms aside and dare not comeinto thy presence, o king! because they have lost the young lords". then attila sent twoknights to beg theodoric to come into his
presence, but he would not for grief and shame.then queen erka rose up weeping and went with her maidens to the cottage where theodoricabode: and when she entered it she said: "my good friend, theodoric! how did my sons farein the war, and fought they as good knights ere they fell?" but theodoric, with mournfulface, answered: "lady! they fought as good knights and parried the blows bravely, andneither of them would part from the other". and with that she went up to him and threwher arms round his neck and said: "good friend! king theodoric! come now into the palace-hallto king attila, and take thy welcome there, and be merry once more. often before now havethe brave men for whom it was appointed, fallen in the battle; and they who live still musttake thought for themselves, since it profits
not to be ever bewailing the dead". so theodoricwent with the queen into the palace-hall, and attila stood up and gave him a kiss ofwelcome and bade him sit beside him on the high-seat. thus he returned to attila's palace,where he dwelt for yet many years, and all was friendship between them as before. two years after this queen erka fell sickof a grievous disease and lay at the point of death. sending for theodoric, she rehearsedto him how he had ever been the best friend of her husband and herself; and as it mightwell happen that this sickness would sever that long friendship, she desired to givehim fifteen marks of red gold in a beaker and a costly purple robe, as memorials ofthe same, and she prayed him to take her young
kinswoman, herauda, to wife. theodoric said:"good lady and queen! thy sickness is doubtless a dangerous one. true friendship hast thouever shown to me and mine; and better it were for attila to lose the half of his kingdomthan to lose thee". thereat he wept like a child and could say no more words, but wentquickly forth of the chamber. then erka desired to see her dear friend,master hildebrand, and spake to him too of the true friendship which was now about tobe severed, in remembrance whereof she gave him a ring of gold. and then sending for attilashe spake to him of her coming death. "thus wilt thou become a widower", said she, "butso thou wilt not long remain. choose, therefore, a good and loving wife, for if thou choosesta wicked woman she may work much harm to thee
and many others beside. good king attila!take no wife out of nibelungen-land, nor from the race of aldrian, for if thou dost, thouwilt sorely repent of it, and harm unspeakable will be wrought to thee and the children whomshe may bear thee". soon after she had spoken these words, she gave up the ghost; and greatwas the lamentation in all hun-land when they heard that the good queen erka was no morein life. the warning given by the dying queen was,like most such warnings, unheeded. after three years of widowerhood, attila sent one of hisnephews into nibelungen-land to ask for the hand of chriemhild, daughter of aldrian, loveliestand wisest of the women of her time; but maddened by secret grief for the loss of her firsthusband, siegfried, who had been slain by
her brothers, hagen and king gunther. thesuit prospered; with strange blindness of heart, king gunther gave his consent to theunion of the sister who was his deadliest enemy with the mightiest king in europe. forseven years chriemhild waited for her revenge; then came that invitation to the nibelungsto visit the court of attila, which, in the infatuation of their souls, king gunther andhis brethren accepted, taking with them a chosen band of a thousand warriors. the schemeof vengeance prepared by chriemhild, the quarrel which she provoked at the banquet, the terribleslaughter suffered and inflicted by the nibelungs in the palace garden, their desperate rushinto the palace-hall, the stand made therein by their ever-dwindling band on the pavementwhich was slippery with the gore of heroes--all
this has been sung by a hundred minstrels,and need not here be repeated. we have only to do with the share theodoric and his friendstook in the fatal combat. long the amalungs stood utterly aloof from the fray, grievingsorely that so many of their friends on both sides were falling by one another's hands.for to the nibelungs, as well as to attila and the huns, were they bound by the tiesof guest-friendship, and in happier days theodoric had ridden with gunther and with hagen, totest the mettle of their knights against the chivalry of britain. so theodoric and hismen stood on the battlement of his palace, which looked down on the garden of attila,and watched from afar the ghastly conflict. but at length they saw the good margrave rudiger,the ally of the amals on so many a hard-fought
battle-field, fall by the hand of his owndaughter's husband, the young prince, giselher; and then could theodoric bear it no longer,but cried, saying: "now is my best friend, margrave rudiger, dead. take your weapons,comrades, and let us avenge his fall". he descended into the street. he forced his wayinto the palace-hall. terrible was the clang of the strong sword ecke-sax on the helmetsof the nibelungs. many of them fell before him, but alas! many of his faithful amalsfell there also, far from their home. at length, in all that stately palace-hall, there remainedbut four men still able to deal blows, and these were theodoric and master hildebrandof the amalungs, hagen and giselher of their foes. and hagen stood up to fight with theodoric,and giselher with hildebrand. then, as king
attila came from his tower to watch the combat,hagen shouted to him: "it were a knightly deed to let young giselher go unhurt, forhe is innocent of the death of siegfried the swift". "yea, truly", said giselher; "chriemhild,my sister, knows that i was a little child of five years old in my mother's bed whenher husband was killed. i am innocent of this blood-feud, yet care i not to live now thatmy brethren are slain". therewith he closed in fight with master hildebrand, and soonreceived his death-wound from the old hero. now there remained but one terrible encounter,that between hagen and theodoric. hagen said: "it seems that here our friendship must cometo an end, great as it has ever been. let us each fight bravely for his life, and knight-like,call on no man for aid". theodoric answered:
"truly, i will let none meddle in this encounter,but will fight it with warlike skill and knightliness". they fought long and hard, and exchanged grievousblows, and both were weary and both were wounded. then theodoric waxed exceeding wroth withhimself for not overcoming his foe, and said: "truly, this is a shame for me to stand hereall the day and not to be able to vanquish the elfin's son". "why should the elfin'sson be worse than the son of the devil himself?" answered hagen. at that theodoric was seizedwith such fury that fiery breath issued from his mouth. hagen's coat of mail was heatedred-hot by this breath of fire, and he was forced to cry out: "i give myself up. anythingto end this torture and doff my red-hot armour. if i were a fish, and not a man, i shouldbe broiled in this burning panoply". then
theodoric sat down and began to unbrace hisadversary's armour; and while he was doing this, queen chriemhild came into the hallwith a blazing torch, which she thrust into the mouth of one after another of the prostratewarriors, her brothers, to see if they were already dead, and to slay them if they werestill living. beholding this, theodoric said to attila: "see how that devil, chriemhild,thy wife, torments her brethren, the noble heroes. see how many brave men, huns and amalungsand nibelungs, have yielded up their life for her sake. and in like fashion would shebring thee and me to death, if she had the power". "truly, she is a devil", answeredattila. "do thou slay her; and it had been a good deed if thou hadst done it seven nightsago. then would many a noble knight be still
living who now is dead". and with that theodoricsprang up and clove chriemhild in twain. theodoric bore the sore-wounded hagen to hispalace and bound up his wounds; but they were mortal, and in a few days hagen died, havingbequeathed to the woman who nursed him the secret of the great nibelung hoard, for thesake of which he had slain siegfried the swift. in the terrible encounter there had fallenone thousand nibelungs, being all their host, and four thousand huns and amalungs. no battleis more celebrated in the old german sagas than this. but hun-land was wasted by reasonof the death of so many valiant warriors, and thus had come to pass all the evil whichthe good queen erka had foretold. and now after thirty-two years of exile, andwith so many of his brave followers dead,
theodoric's heart pined more than ever forhis native land, and he said to master hildebrand: "i would rather die in verona than live anylonger in hun-land". to return with an army was hopeless, so scanty a remnant was leftof the amalungs. the only hope was to steal back secretly and try if it were possibleto find friends enough in the old home to win back the crown. master hildebrand knewof one thing which made the outlook less desperate: "i have heard that the duke who rules oververona is a brave knight named alebrand; and i cannot but think that this is my son, bornof my wife, uta, shortly after i fled hither". so they got together four horses, two fortheodoric and hildebrand, one for the lady, herauda, theodoric's wife, and one to carrytheir raiment and store of silver and gold;
and after leave taken of attila, who weptbitterly at theodoric's departure, and prayed him to stay till he could fit out anotherarmy for his service, they set forth from susat and rode westward night and day, avoidingthe towns and the haunts of wayfarers. on their road they were met by a band of twoand thirty knights commanded by earl elsung, a kinsman of that elsung of verona, whom theodoric'sgrandfather, samson, had slain. the blood-feud was now old, but elsung yearned to avengeit on theodoric. the lady herauda wept when she saw so many well-armed knights approaching,but theodoric bade her be of joyous heart till she saw one of her two protectors fall,and that, he deemed, would never be. and in truth, in the fight that followed, so welldid the aged hildebrand wield the sword gram,
the wondrous sword of siegfried the swift,and such mighty blows dealt theodoric with ecke-sax, that earl elsung himself and sixteenof his men were left dead on the field. the rest fled, all but a nephew of elsung, a braveyoung knight. him also hildebrand vanquished in fight, and from him, as ransom for hislife, the victors received great tidings from amalungen-land. for he told them that hermanricwas grievously sick, and that the remedies which the false sibich had persuaded him toresort to had left him far weaker than before, and, in short, the great hermanric was alreadyas good as dead. they came next in their journey to a castlewhich was held by duke lewis and his son conrad. to them master hildebrand, riding forward,made himself known, and from them he received
joyous welcome. they rode back with him intothe forest, where theodoric was tarrying with the lady herauda, and bent the knee beforehim. for they had heard that hermanric was dead, and though the false sibich aspiredto be king after him, both they and all the people in those parts chose rather to obeytheodoric, and had sent a messenger into hun-land to pray him to return. theodoric receivedduke lewis graciously, but would not enter into his castle, for he had sworn that veronashould be the first stronghold in amalungen-land within whose walls he would enter. now of verona the lord was (as hildebrandhad heard) his son alebrand, born after he had left the country. he was a brave knight,and a courteous, but fiery, and when the aged
hildebrand, riding towards verona, met himin the way, the two champions rushed at one another, and fought long and desperately.the battle ceased from the mere weariness of the fighters once and again. at every pauseeach knight, the old and the young, asked the other of his name, and each refused totell his name till he had heard that of his antagonist. and this, though all the timehildebrand more than guessed that it was his own son from whom he was receiving, and towhom he was dealing, such dreadful blows. at length, after hildebrand had given hisopponent a great gaping wound in the thigh, he fell upon him and bore him to the earth,and then with his sword at his breast said: "tell me thy name or thou shalt die". "i carenot for life", said the other, "since so old
a man has vanquished me". "if thou wilt preservethy life, tell me straightway if thou art my son alebrand; if so, i am thy father, hildebrand"."if thou art my father hildebrand, i am thy son alebrand", said the younger hero. andwith that they both arose, threw their arms around each other's necks, and kissed oneanother; and both were right glad, and they mounted their horses and rode towards verona.from the gates the lady uta, alebrand's mother, was coming forth to meet her son; but shewept and wailed when she saw his streaming wound, and said: "oh, my son, why art thouso sore wounded, and who is that aged man that is following thee?" alebrand answered:"for this wound i need have no shame, sith it was given me by my father, hildebrand,and it is he who rides behind me". then was
the mother overjoyed, and greeted her husbandlovingly, and with great gladness they entered into the city, where hildebrand tarried forthe night, and the lady uta bound up the wounds of alebrand. after this theodoric's course was easy. hewas received with joyous welcome by the citizens of his native verona, as he rode through thestreets on his faithful falke, master hildebrand of the long white beard holding high his banner.alebrand handed back to his keeping verona and all amalungen-land, which he had receivedto hold from the dead hermanric. theodoric sat in the high-seat of the palace; the peoplebrought him rich presents, and all the nobles took him for their rightful lord and ruler.
the false sibich marched against him witha larger army, thirteen thousand to theodoric's eight thousand; but theodoric and hildebrandrode as they pleased through the armed throng, dealing death on every side; and duke alebrand,engaging sibich in single combat, after long fight, waxed exceeding wroth, and smitinga dreadful blow, clove him through from the shoulder to the saddle-bow. then all the romansgave up the strife, and fell at theodoric's feet, praying him to be their lord. so wastheodoric crowned in the city of rome; and now he was king over all the lands which hadonce owned the sway of hermanric. it needs not to tell at length of the deedsof theodoric after he had recovered his kingdom. he caused a statue to be cast in copper ofhimself, seated on his good steed falke, and
this statue many pilgrims to rome have seen. also a statue of himself, standing on a hightower, brandishing his good sword ecke-sax towards the north; and this statue is at verona. in his old age he and many of his subjectsturned to the christian faith. one of those that were baptized along with him was masterhildebrand, who died soon after his conversion, being either one hundred and eighty or twohundred years old. theodoric's wife, herauda, died also about this time, a good woman andmuch loved of the people for all her gracious deeds, even as her cousin, erka, had beenloved by the huns. after herauda's death theodoric married isold, widow of hertnit, king of bergara,whose husband had been slain by a terrible
dragon, which theodoric vanquished. she wasfair to look upon and wise of heart. and after these things it came to pass thatold king attila died, being enticed by aldrian, the son of hagen, into the cave where thegreat nibelung hoard lay hidden. and when he was in the recesses of the mountain, gloatingover the wondrous treasure, aldrian passed swiftly forth and closed the doors of thecave and left him to perish of hunger in the midst of the greatest treasure that was inthe world. thus aldrian avenged the death of his father and of all the nibelungs. buttheodoric was made king over hun-land by the help of his friends in that realm, and thushe became the mightiest king in the world. of all his old warriors only heime was left,and heime had buried himself in a convent,
where he sang psalms every day with the monks,and did penance for his sins. theodoric, hearing that he was there, sought him out, but longtime heime denied that he was heime. "much snow has fallen", said theodoric, "on my headand on thine since our steeds drank the stream dry in friesland. our hair was then yellowas gold, and fell in curls over our shoulders; now is it white as a dove". and then he pliedhim with one memory after another of the joyous old times of the battle and the banquet, tillat length heime confessed, and said: "good lord theodoric, i do remember all of whichthou hast spoken, and now will i go forth with thee from this place". and with thathe fetched his armour from the convent-chest, and his good old steed rispa from the convent-stable,and once more rode gladly after his lord.
after doing many more brave deeds, he fellin battle with a giant, the biggest and clumsiest of his tribe. theodoric, riding forth alone,sought out the giant's lair, and with his good sword ecke-sax avenged the death of hisfriend; and that was the last battle that the son of dietmar fought with mortal foe. the years of theodoric's old age were givento the chase of the beasts of the forest, for he was still a mighty hunter when hisother strength was gone. one day as he was bathing at the place whichis still called "theodoric's bath", a groom called out to him: "my lord! a stag has justrushed past, the greatest and the finest that ever i saw in my life". with that theodoricwrapped a bathing-cloak round him, and calling
for his horse, prepared to set off in chaseof the stag. the horse was long in coming, and meanwhile a mighty steed, coal-black,suddenly appeared before him. theodoric sprang upon the strange charger's back, and it flewoff with him as swiftly as a bird. his best groom on his best horse followed vainly behind."my lord", cried he, "when wilt thou come back, that thou ridest so fast and far". buttheodoric knew by this time that it was no earthly steed that he was bestriding, andfrom which he vainly tried to unclasp his legs. "i am ill-mounted", cried he to thegroom. "this must be the foul fiend on which i ride. yet will i return, if god wills andholy mary". with that he vanished from his servant's sight, and since then no man hasseen and no man ever will see theodoric of
verona. yet some german minstrels say thatit has been opened to them in dreams that he has found grace at last, because in hisdeath-ride he called on the names of god and the virgin mary. i have thus endeavoured to bring before thereader (i hope not with undue prolixity) the chief events in the life of the mythical theodoricof the middle ages. still, as late as the sixteenth century the common people lovedto talk of this mighty hero. the bavarian "chronicle" (translated and continued about1580) says: "our people sing and talk much about 'dietrich von bern.' you would not soonfind an ancient king who is so well known to the common people amongst us, or aboutwhom they have so much to say". what they
had to say was, as the reader will have observed,strangely removed from the truth of history. how all this elaborate superstructure of romancecould be reared on the mere name of theodoric of verona is almost inconceivable to us, tillwe call to mind that the minstrels were in truth the novelists of the middle ages, notpretending or desiring to instruct, but only to amuse and interest their hearers, and tobeguile the tedium of existence in dull baronial castles. of the thousand and one details containedin the foregoing narrative, there are not more than three or four which correspond withthe life of the real theodoric, he was, as the saga says, of amal lineage. his father'sname, theudemir, is fairly enough represented
by dietmar. he was for some years of his life(but not his middle or later life) a wanderer more or less dependent on the favour of apowerful sovereign. his life during this period did get entangled with that of another theodoric,even as the life of the hero of saga becomes entangled with the life of theodoric of russia.after subduing all his enemies, he did eventually rule in rome, and erect statues to himselfthere and at verona. ravenna and verona were the places of his most frequent residence.in his mature years, when his whole soul was set on the maintenance of civilitas, he mightvery fitly have spoken such words as he is said to have used to witig in his boyhood,"i will establish such peace in my father's realm and mine, that it shall not be in thepower of every wandering adventurer to challenge
me to single combat". moreover, throughoutall the wild vagaries of the narrative, character, that mysterious and indestructible essence,is not wholly lost. no two books can be more absolutely unlike one another than the "wilkina-saga"and the "various letters of cassiodorus", yet the same hot-tempered, impulsive, generousman is pourtrayed to us by both. as for the other names introduced, they are,of course, brought in at the cost of the strangest anachronisms. the cruel uncle, hermanric,is really a remote collateral ancestor who died nearly eighty years before theodoricwas born. the generous host and ally, attila, died two years before his birth, and the especialgladness of that birth was that it occurred at the same time with a signal victory ofthe amal kings over the sons of attila. to
take an illustration from modern history,the general framework of the "wilkina-saga" is about as accurate as a romance would bewhich should represent queen victoria as driven from her throne by the old pretender, remainingfor thirty years an exile at the court of napoleon, and at length recovering her kingdomon the old pretender's death. but, as has been often and well pointed out,the most marvellous thing in these old german sagas is the utter disappearance from themof that roman empire which at the cost of such giant labour the teutonic nations hadoverthrown. the roman imperator, the roman legions, even the catholic priests with theirpious zeal against arianism, count for nothing in the story. just as the knightly warriorsprick to and fro on their fiery steeds to
the court of arthur of britain, with no mentionof the intervening sea, so these german bards link together the days of chivalry and theold barbarian life which tacitus paints for us in the "germania", without apparently anyconsciousness of the momentous deed which the german warriors had in the meanwhile performed,full of significance for all succeeding generations of men, the overthrow of the empire of rome.