Theodoric the Goth

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Having slain these and many other kings, and extended his dominions over
the whole of Gaul, he once, in an assembly of his nobles, lamented his
solitary estate. "Alas, I am but a stranger and a pilgrim, and have no
kith or kin who could help me if adversity came upon me". But this he
said, not in real grief for their death, but in guile, in order that if
there were any forgotten relative lurking anywhere he might come forth
and be killed. None, however, was found to answer to the
invitation.[112]

[Footnote 112: We are reminded of the well-known story of Marshal
Narvaez on his death-bed. "My son", said the confessor, "it is necessary
that you should with all your heart grant forgiveness to your enemies".
"Ah, that is easy", said the dying man, "I have shot them all".]

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 much labor and at the price of so many
crimes, was partitioned among his four sons. The aged Emperor
Anastasius survived his Frankish ally seven years, and died in the
eighty-ninth year of his age, 8th July, 518. His death was sudden, and
some later writers averred that it was caused by a thunderstorm, of
which he had always had a peculiar and superstitious fear. Others
declared that he was inadvertently buried alive, that he was heard to
cry out in his coffin, and that when it was opened some days after, he
was found to have gnawed his arm. But these facts are not known to
earlier and more authentic historians, and the invention of them seems
to be only a rhetorical way of putting the fact that he died at enmity
with the Holy See.

[Illustration: COPPER COIN OF ANASTASIUS FORTY NUMMI.]

CHAPTER XII.

ROME AND RAVENNA.

Theodoric's visit to Rome--Disputed Papal election--Theodoric's speech
at the Golden Palm--The monk Fulgentius--Bread-distributions--Races in
the Circus--Conspiracy of Odoin--Return to Ravenna--Marriage festivities
of Amalaberga--Description of Ravenna--Mosaics in the churches--S.
Apollinare Dentro--Processions of virgins and martyrs--Arian
baptistery--So-called palace of Theodoric--Vanished statues.

The death of Anastasius was followed by changes in the attitude towards
one another of Pope and Emperor, which embittered the closing years of
Theodoric and caused his sun to set in clouds. But before we occupy
ourselves with these transactions, we may consider a little more
carefully the relations between Theodoric and his subjects in the
happier days, the early and middle portion of his reign, and for this
purpose we will first of all hear what the chroniclers have to tell us
of a memorable visit to Rome which he paid in the eighth year after his
accession, that year which, according to our present chronology, is
marked as the five hundredth after the birth of Christ.[113]

[Footnote 113: The chronology now in use, invented by the monk Dionysius
Exiguus, a friend of Cassiodorus, was not adopted till some years after
the death of Theodoric. Consequently, 500 a.d. would be known in Rome
only as 1252 A.U.C. (from the foundation of the City), and would have no
special interest attaching to it.]

Rome had been for more than two centuries strangely neglected by the
rulers who in her name lorded it over the civilised world. Ever since
Diocletian's reconstruction of the Empire, it had been a rare event for
an Augustus to be seen within her walls. Even the Emperor who had Italy
for his portion generally resided at Milan or Ravenna rather than on the
banks of the Tiber. Constantine was but a hasty visitor 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 Theodosius followed 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
under the daggers of the avengers of Aetius. But the fact that these
visits are so pointedly mentioned shows the extreme rarity of their
occurrence; nor was any great alteration wrought herein by Theodoric,
for this visit to Rome, which we are now about to consider, and which
lasted for six months, seems to have been the only one that he ever paid
in the course of his reign of thirty-three years.

He came at an opportune time, when there was a 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 different churches, in order to elect the successor to a
deceased pope. The larger number, assembled in 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 majority of the Senate and supported by the delegates of the
Emperor, met in the church now called by the name of S. Maria Maggiore
and voted for the arch-presbyter Laurentius.

The effect of this contested election was to throw Rome into confusion.
Parties of armed men who favoured the cause of one or the other
candidate paraded the City, and all the streets were filled with riot
and bloodshed. It seemed as if the days of Marius and Sulla were come
back again, though it would have been impossible to explain to either
Marius or Sulla what was the nature of the contest, a dispute as to the
right to be considered successor to a fisherman of Bethsaida. When the
anarchy was becoming intolerable, the Senate, Clergy, and People
determined to invoke the mediation of Theodoric, thus furnishing the
highest testimony to the reputation for fairness and impartiality which
had been earned by the Arian king. Both the rival bishops repaired to
Ravenna, and having laid the case before the king, heard his answer.
"Whichsoever candidate was 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 as
lawful 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 after nearly six years had elapsed and six Synods had been held,
that Laurentius and his party gave up the contest and finally acquiesced
in the legitimacy of the claim of Symmachus to 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 judgment had
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 doubtless often 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 he
performed his devotions with all the outward signs of reverence which
would have been exhibited by the most pious Catholic.[114]

[Footnote 114: Et occurrit Beato Petro devotissimus ac si Catholicus
(Anon. Valesn, 65).]

Before he entered the gates of the City he was welcomed by the Senate
and People of Rome, who poured forth to meet him with every indication
of joy. Borne along by the jubilant throng, he reached the Senate-house,
which still stood in 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 accent of the
speech may not have been faultless,[115] the style was assuredly not
Ciceronian, but the matter was worthy of the enthusiastic acclamations
with which it was received. Recognising the continuity of his government
with that of the Emperors who had preceded him, he promised that with
God's help he would keep inviolate all that the Roman Princes in the
past had ordained for their people. So might a Norman or Angevin king,
anxious to re-assure his Saxon subjects, swear to observe all the laws
of the good King Edward the Confessor.

[Footnote 115: It is possible that historians somewhat underrate the
degree of Theodoric's acquaintance with Latin as a spoken language.
There was a great deal of Latin used in the Pannonian and Mesian
regions, in which his childhood and youth were passed; and some, though
certainly not so much, at Constantinople, where he spent his boyhood.]

This speech of Theodoric's at the Golden Palm was listened to by an
obscure African monk, whose emotions on the occasion are described to us
by his biographer. Fulgentius, the grandson of a senator of Carthage,
had forsaken what seemed a promising official career, and had accepted
the solitude and the hardships of a monastic life, at a time when, owing
to the severe persecution of the Catholics by the Vandal kings, there
was no prospect of anything but ignominy, exile, and perhaps death for
every eminent confessor of the Catholic faith. Fulgentius and his
friends had suffered many outrages at the hands of Numidian freebooters
and Vandal officers, and they meditated a flight into Egypt, where they
might practise a yet more rigid monastic rule undisturbed by 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 had reached Rome in this same summer of 500, which was
made memorable by Theodoric's visit. "He found", 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 Theodoric the 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 deference as many of the
servants of God as he could in so short a time be introduced to, stood
in 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 adorned with 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 looked not willingly upon aught in this gorgeous spectacle, nor was
his heart seduced to take any pleasure in these worldly vanities, but
rather kindled thereby to a more vehement desire for Jerusalem above.
And thus with edifying discourse did he ever admonish the brethren who
were present: 'How fair must be that heavenly Jerusalem, if the earthly
Rome 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 profitable manner all
that day, and now with his whole heart earnestly desiring to behold his
monastery again, he sailed swiftly to Africa, touching at Sardinia, and
presented himself to his monks, who, in the excess of their joy, could
scarcely believe that the blessed Fulgentius was indeed returned".

Besides his promises of good government according to the old laws of
Empire, Theodoric recognised the duty which, according to
long-established usage, devolved upon the supreme ruler to provide
"panem et circenses" [116] for the citizens of Rome. The elaborate
machinery, part of the crowned Socialism of the Empire, by which a
certain number of loaves of bread had been distributed to the poorer
householders of the City, had probably broken down in the death-agony of
the Caesars of the West, and had not been again set going by Odovacar. We
are told that Theodoric now distributed as rations "to the people of
Rome and to the poor" 120,000 _modii_ of corn yearly. As this represents
only 30,000 bushels, and as in the flourishing days of the Empire no
fewer than 200,000 citizens used to present themselves, probably once or
twice a week, to receive their rations, it is evident that (if the
chronicler's numbers are correct) we have here no attempt to revive the
wholesale distribution of corn to the citizens--an expenditure with
which the finances of Theodoric's kingdom were probably quite unable to
cope. What was now 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 socialistic
attempt to feed a whole people, which had preceded it.

[Footnote 116: Bread and circus-shows.]

At the same time that he granted these _annonae,_ Theodoric also set
aside, from the proceeds of a certain wine-tax, two hundred pounds of
gold (L8,000) 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 when those walls, battered and breached
as they were, would be all too strong for the fortunes of the Gothic
warriors who would dash themselves vainly against their ramparts.

It was now thirty years since Theodoric, returning from his exile at
Constantinople, had been hailed by his Gothic countrymen as a partner of
his father's throne. In memory of that event, from which he was
separated by so many years of toil and triumph, so many battles, so many
marches, so many weary negotiations with emperors and kings, Theodoric
celebrated his Tricennalia at Rome. On this occasion the gigantic
Flavian Amphitheatre--the Colosseum as we generally call it--seems not
to have been opened to the people. The old murderous fights with
gladiators which once dyed its pavement 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 perhaps have
taxed too heavily the still feeble finances of the State. But to the
Circus Maximus all the citizens crowded in order to see the
chariot-races which were run there, and which recalled the brilliant
festivities of the Empire. The Circus, oval in form, notwithstanding its
name, was situated in the long valley between the Palatine and Aventine
Hills. High above, on the north-east, rose the palaces of the Caesars
already mouldering to decay, but one of which had probably been
furbished up to make it a fitting residence for the king of the Goths
and Romans. On the south-west the solemn Aventme still perhaps showed
side by side the decaying temples of the 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
ellipse between the two hills the citizens of Rome were ranged, not too
many now in the dwindled state of the City to find elbow-room for all. A
shout of applause went up from senators and people as the Gothic king,
surrounded by a brilliant throng of courtiers, moved majestically 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 rose the long
platform called the _spina,_ at either end of which stood an obelisk
brought from Egypt by an Emperor. (One of these obelisks now adorns the
Piazza del Popolo, and the other the square in front of the Lateran.) At
a signal from the king the races began. Whether the first heat would be
between bigae or quadrigae (two-horse or four-horse chariots), we cannot
say; but, of one kind or the other, twelve chariots bounded forth from
the _ostia_ the moment that the rope which had hitherto confined them
was let fall. Seven times they careered round and round the long
_spina,_ of course with eager struggles to get the inside turn, and
perhaps with a not infrequent fall when a too eager charioteer, in his
desire to accomplish this, struck against the protecting curbstone. Ac
each circuit was completed by the foremost chariot, a steward of the
races placed a great wooden egg in a conspicuous place upon the _spina_
to mark the score; and keen was the excitement when, in a match between
two well-known rivals, six eggs announced to the spectators that the
seventh, the deciding circuit, had begun. The entire course thus
traversed seven times in each direction made a race of between three and
four miles, and each heat would probably occupy nearly a quarter of an
hour.[117] The number of heats _(missus)_ was usually four and twenty,
and we may therefore imagine Theodoric and his people occupying the best
part of a summer day in watching the galloping steeds, the shouting,
lashing drivers, and the fast-flashing chariot wheels.

[Footnote 117: I take this calculation from Friedlander
(Sittengeschichte Roms, II., 329), but I cannot find the precise figures
on which he bases his calculation We know the length of the Circus, but
of course for our purpose the length of the _spina_ round which the
chariots careered is the important factor.]

At Rome, as at Constantinople, though not in quite so exaggerated a
degree, partisanship with the charioteers was more than a passing
fancy; it was a deep and abiding passion with the multitude, and it
sometimes went very near 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. Red and
White had had their day of glory and still won a fair proportion of
races, but the keenest and most terrible competition was between Blue
and Green. At Constantinople, a generation later 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 city in flames and nearly cost that Emperor his throne. No
such disastrous consequences resulted from 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 regard to a fitting sobriety of character. The
Green charioteer flashes by: part of the people is in despair. The Blue
gets a lead: a larger part of the City is in misery. The populace cheer
frantically when they have gained nothing; they are cut to the heart
when they have received no loss; and they plunge with as much eagerness
into these empty contests as if the whole welfare of their imperilled
country depended upon them". In two other letters Theodoric is obliged
seriously to chide the Roman Senate for its irascible temper in dealing
with one of the factions of the Circus. A Patrician and a Consul, so it
was alleged, had truculently assaulted the Green party, and one man had
lost his life in the fray. The king ordered that the matter should be
enquired into by two officials of "Illustrious" rank, who had special
jurisdiction in cases wherein nobles of high position were concerned. He
then replied to a counter-accusation which had been brought by the
Senators against the mob for assailing them with rude clamours in the
Hippodrome. "You must distinguish", says the king, "between deliberate
insolence and the festive impertinences of a place of public amusement.
It is not exactly a congregation of Catos that comes together at the
Circus. The place excuses some excesses. And moreover you must remember
that these insulting cries generally proceed from the beaten party: and
therefore you need not complain of clamour which is the result of a
victory that you earnestly desired". Again the king had to warn the
Senators not to bring disgrace on their good name and do violence to
public order by allowing their menials to embroil themselves with the
mob of the Hippodrome. Any slave accused of having shed the blood of a
free-born citizen was to be at once given up to justice; or else his
master was to pay a fine of L400, 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 may utter in the midst of the general rejoicing.
If any insult which requires special notice should be offered you,
bring it before the Prefect of the City. This is far wiser and safer
than taking the law into your own hands".

The festivities which celebrated Theodoric's visit to the Eternal City
were perhaps somewhat discordantly interrupted by the discovery of a
conspiracy against him, set on foot by a certain Count Odoin, about whom
we have no 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 of the old Gothic nobility
with the increasing tendency to copy Roman civilisation and to assume
Imperial prerogatives which they observed in the king who had once been
little more than chief among a band of comrades. But we have not
sufficient information as to this conspiracy to enable us to fix its
true place in the history of Theodoric, nor can we even say 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 the Sessorian palace, a building which
probably stood upon the patrimony of Constantine, hard by the southern
wall of Rome, and near to the spot where we now see the Church of Santa
Croce.

At the request of the people, the words of Theodoric'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
_Joyeuse Entree_ of a Burgundian duke into Brussels confirm and
commemorate the privileges of his good subjects the citizens of
Brabant. Upon the whole, there can be little doubt that the half-year
which Theodoric spent in Rome was really a time of joyfulness both to
prince and people, and that the tiles which are still occasionally
turned up by the spade in Rome, bearing the inscription "Domino Nostro
Theodorico Felix Roma", were not merely the work 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
years of his life, he probably regarded as his home--Ravenna by the
Adriatic,--and there he delighted the heart of his subjects by the
pageants which celebrated the marriage of his niece Amalaberga with
Hermanfrid, the king of the distant Thuringians. This young prince, whom
Theodoric had adopted as his "son by right of arms" [118] had sent to
his future kinsman a team of cream-coloured horses of a rare breed,[119]
and Theodoric sent in return horses, swords and shields, and other
instruments of war, but, as he said, "the greatest requital that we make
is joining you in marriage to a woman of such surpassing beauty as our
niece".

[Footnote 118: Filius per arma.]

[Footnote 119: Perhaps it might be safe to call these horses cobs; but
let Cassiodorus describe their points. They were "horses of a silvery
colour, as nuptial horses ought to be. Their chests and thighs are
adorned in a becoming manner with spheres of flesh. Their ribs are
expanded to a certain breadth; their bellies are short and narrow. Their
heads have a likeness to the stag's, and they imitate the swiftness of
that animal. These horses are gentle from their extreme plumpness; very
swift, for all their bigness, pleasant to look upon, yet more pleasant
to ride. For they have gentle paces and do not fatigue their riders with
insane curvetings. To ride them is rest rather than labour; and being
broken in to a delightfully steady pace, they have great staying power
and lasting activity". These sleek and easy-paced cobs are not at all
the ideal present from a rough barbarian of the North to his "father in
arms".]

The later fortunes of the Ostrogothic princess who thus migrated from
Ravenna to the banks of the Elbe were not happy. A proud and ambitious
woman, she is said to have stimulated her husband to make himself, by
fratricide and civil war, sole king of the Thuringians. The help of one
of the sons of Clovis had been unwisely invoked for this operation. So
long as the Ostrogothic hero lived, Thuringia was safe under his
protection, but soon after his death dissensions arose between Franks
and 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. Amalaberga took refuge with her
kindred at Ravenna, and after the collapse of their fortunes retired to
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 lands between the Elbe and the Danube,
over which the Thuringians had wandered, were added to the dominions of
the Franks and became part of the mighty kingdom of Austrasia.

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