on the very day of the Ostrogothic victory over the Huns. At the age of eight he exchanged the rough roving life of his father's camp for the comfort and ease of the royal court at Constantinople, where he remained for ten years as a hostage for the alliance which the emperor had entered into with the barbarians. It cannot be said that the young Amal profited greatly by the careful education bestowed on him, for, if we are to believe the statement of the Anonymus Valesii,' he could to the last only sign his name through a stencil. When his father died in 474, Theodoric succeeded to the hereditary leadership of the Ostrogoths, and soon gave evidence that his hand was better fitted to the sword than the style. He appears to have been an active agent in the restoration of Zeno when he was driven into exile by the usurper Basiliscus; and the various military enterprises in which he was engaged between the years 477 and 488, now for the emperor against his revolted generals, now for his own hand against his patron, gave him a wide experience. So that when the cautious Zeno tried to check the growing power of his young ally by pitting against him his namesake Theodoric Strabo (the squint-eye), an unscrupulous adventurer, who, jealous of his rival's superior birth and influence, was for ever scheming to

supplant him in the favour of the Gothic people, he found that the hostage of Constantinople, the nursling of the court, had, like the lion-cub of Eschylus, become too formidable to be trifled with. Accordingly, he was only too glad to fall in with the Amal's suggestion that he should pass over to Italy and win her from Odovacar to the Roman empire once again. Towards the end of 488 Theodoric left Wallachia at the head of an enormous multitude—we have no certain knowledge of its exact number, but the lowest computation puts it at forty thousand fighting men, with their wives and families, amounting in all to something like two hundred thousand souls.

The march went on all through the winter of that year, and the spring and early summer of the following, amid dangers and difficulties the magnitude of which it is not easy to measure. For besides the anxiety of providing provisions for a whole nation, there was the active resistance of the wild tribes to be reckoned upon, through whose territory the road to Italy lay. Notwithstanding a great and signal victory over the Gepida, who barred the passage of the Ulca, innumerable other conflicts with the same Gepida or with the Sarmatians kept Theodoric and his host on the farther side of the Alps until August 489, when he at last descended into Italy, to find

Odovacar confronting him on the banks of the Isonzo. Step by step the stubborn king was driven back, from the Isonzo to Verona, from Verona to Ravenna, where he held out for three years till hunger and despair forced him to capitulate. A treaty was arranged by John, archbishop of Ravenna, and it seemed as if Odovacar was to reap in Theodoric's clemency the reward of his own forbearance towards Augustulus fourteen years before. Not only were his life and safety assured to him, but it was agreed upon oath that the rule of Italy should be equally divided between conqueror and conquered. A week's holiday of friendship and parleying was crowned by a banquet held to celebrate the union of the rival kings. Odovacar came in all confidence, in answer to Theodoric's invitation, and was in the act of receiving the petition of two suppliants, who held him by the hand in the earnestness of their appeal, when a couple of soldiers placed in ambush in the hall rushed forth to slay him. "But when they saw him," writes the chronicler,1 "they were afraid, and would not set on him." Upon this Theodoric ran up, and with a brutal jest and rough reply to Odovacar's helpless call on God-Toυ ó Oɛós;-cleft

1 Johannes Antiochanus, in Karl Muller's Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum (Paris, Didot, 1841-72), tome v. p. 214a.

him from chin to loin. Nor did the furious Ostrogoth rest content with one victim. Odovacar's brother was shot down as he fled through the palace garden; his wife Sunigalda was starved to death in prison; and their son Ocla was sent as a hostage to Gaul, whence he presently escaped only to meet a bloody death at the hands of his father's murderer.

Thus did Theodoric seal in blood his charter of conquest. But when once his vengeance was glutted, when once he had received the emperor's consent to his mastership of Italy, he devoted himself heart and soul to the carrying out of Odovacar's prudent plan of government. For thirty-three years the realm enjoyed peace and prosperity ;-peace, for Theodoric, as often as his northern frontier was threatened by Gaul or German, moved his court from Ravenna to Verona 1 or Pavia, whence he could easily check any barbarian advance; prosperity, for he was sagacious enough to see that it was to the real interest of Italy that Goths and Italians should be rigidly kept apart, the former receiving the long wished for tertiarum distributio, as a reward for past services, and as an inducement

1 Theodoric's connection with Verona survives in the name 66 Dietrich of Bern," under which he figures in the old High-German romances of the middle ages.

to protect the rights of the natives; while these last were encouraged to cultivate without let or hindrance the rich resources of the land, which revived wonderfully during these quiet times. He thus restored to Italy something of her ancient splendour and supremacy, and the ambassadors who crowded to Ravenna from every country in Europe went away filled with wonder at the wisdom of the king and the magnificence of his court.1

2

It was during this last expiring flicker of Roman glory that Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius moved across the scene; and his is one of the names that reflects lustre on the reign of Theodoric, while it lays the stigma of undying shame on the memory of the senate which pronounced his most unmerited condemnation, and of the king who had it carried out.

We cannot be certain of the exact year of his birth, but it most probably fell somewhere this side of 480 A.D.3 His father, Aurelius Manlius Boe

1 Cf. Decline and Fall, c. 39; and Var., 6, 9; 7, 5.

2 Boethius, and not Boetius, is the way the name should be written. See Usener, Anec. Hold., p. 43.

3 The limits of the date of his birth are 475 in the one direction and 483 in the other. We know that he died in 524, and just before his death we hear him speaking of the signs of premature decay, of the old age of sorrow, that he bears upon his body—

"Intempestivi funduntur vertice cani

Et tremit effeto corpore laxa cutis."-Cons. i. m. 1.

Now grey hairs cannot be called untimely at the age of fifty. He