1

not? But let us grant that it was natural that evil-minded men, who were thirsting for the blood of all good citizens, and of the whole senate, should have sought my destruction, in whom they saw the champion of both citizens and senate. Did I deserve the same treatment from the senators ? Thou dost remember, as I think, since thou wast ever with me to direct all my words and actions— thou dost remember, I repeat, that day at Verona when the king, thirsting for our general destruction, sought to extend the charge of treason lodged against Albinus to the senate as a body, and with what indifference to my own safety I upheld the honour of the whole order. Thou knowest that these my words are true, and that I have never boasted where my own merit was concerned. For a man lessens

in a measure the inward joy of a self-approving conscience as often as he makes a parade of what he has done, and is paid for it with fame. Thou seest clearly what has been the result of my integrity. In place of the reward of real virtue, I am undergoing the penalty of fictitious guilt; and was there ever a confessed criminal who found his judges so unanimous that some of them did not give way, either from a knowledge of the frailty of mortal

1 Epicurus, in the De Ira Divina, cap. xiii,

nature, or from a consideration of the circumstances that wait on Fortune, to which all men alike are liable? If I were charged with having attempted to fire the temple of God, to slay His ministers with sacrilegious sword, to compass the death of the good and honourable, even then sentence should have been pronounced on me in my presence, and not until I had confessed or been convicted. As it is, all on account of an excess of zeal for the senate, I have been condemned to death and loss of rights, unheard and undefended, while nearly five hundred miles away. Truly, its members deserve that no one could ever be convicted on a like charge! 1 Those who brought the accusation knew well what it was worth; and so, to darken it with the admixture of some real crime, they lyingly asserted that ambition for advancement had led me to stain my conscience with sacrilege. But thou, who hast thy dwelling ever within me, didst drive far from my bosom's throne all desire for earthly things, and sacrilege could not find a place before thine eyes. Day by day thou didst instil into my ears and into my meditation the saying of Pythagoras, 'Follow

1 "O meritos, de simili crimine neminem posse convinci !"—i.c., they deserve, for their pusillanimity on this occasion, that no one should ever be found to brave a tyrant's anger in defending their rights.

God.' Was it likely that I, whom thou wast forming to perfection, to the very likeness of God, should seek the assistance of the foulest and vilest spirits? Besides, my unsullied hearth and home, the honoured friends who frequented it, my wife's father, a man without reproach and winning esteem by deed as well as name,1 are my champions against all suspicion of such a charge."

And so he goes on, complaining to his divine consoler that they have besmirched her own robe in thus attacking the most devoted of her disciples, while he inveighs loudly against the unkind Fortune that suffers the innocent to be punished and lets the guilty go free.

Against this impassioned apology it is only fair to set the indirect evidence of Cassiodorus on the other side. The Varia Epistolæ' of this writer are a collection of despatches concerning the administration of the kingdom, composed at the command and in the name of Theodoric and his successors. The bulk of them are addressed to Italian and Gothic officials; and overcharged as they are with laborious. erudition and rhetorical adornment-to repeat his

1 I retain the MS. reading, "æque actu ipso reverendus," and regard the expression as equivalent to "suis ipsius actibus reverendus." Cf. Obbarius's note on the passage.

barbarian master's orders in the simple and straightforward form in which they were doubtless issued would have been impossible to the garrulous and conceited old Italian-they afford us a most instructive insight into the scheme by which Theodoric sought to govern the land he had won with his sword.

We know something of the career of Cyprian from two of these letters (Variæ,' v. 40, 41), and we may form a fair conception of the man from the hints they contain. The first of them announces to Cyprian his elevation to the comitiva sacrarum largitionum, the most important financial post in the kingdom; the second recommends the newly appointed officer to the notice of the senate.

Cyprian, we are told, was the son of one Opilio, who held office under the unfortunate Odovacar. The father had nothing to leave behind him but an honourable name, but the young man soon began to make his way in the world, thanks to his own ability and the early favour of Theodoric, with whom his duties as Referendary1 brought him into close and frequent communication. He seems to have been gifted with a wonderful power of placing the two sides of any question clearly and rapidly

1 See above, p. 31, note.

before the court, and to have been able to state a complicated case just as well in the open air, as he rode by the king's side, as in the dry legal atmosphere of the council chamber.

The practical training, so much more valuable than any amount of theory, in which he had been schooled, stood him in good stead when he was despatched on an important diplomatic mission to Constantinople, and the imperial presence had no terrors for one who was familiar with the awful majesty of the Ostrogoth.

"Nihil tibi post nos potuit esse mirabile," Theodoric is made to say by his secretary, dead to all sense of humour. The envoy's knowledge of three languages, and his natural nimbleness of mind, enabled him to cope successfully with even the slippery Greeks.

What the precise object of this mission was we have no means of knowing, but we may guess that it was the occasion on which the intrigue between the senate and the emperor was discovered which brought about the trial at Verona.

The letter goes on to say that Theodoric has, in accordance with his usual procedure, thoroughly proved and tried the man whom he has chosen to honour, and that he has not found him wanting