Theodoric the Goth

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Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of 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. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture
representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and
the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a
Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, Attila,
sitting on the throne, and the two Roman Emperors staggering under sacks
full of gold coin, which they bore upon their shoulders, and pouring out
their precious contents at his feet.

This little incident helps us to understand the next strange act in the
drama of Attila's invasion. To enjoy the luxury of humbling the great
Empire, and of trampling on the pride of her statesmen, seems to have
been the sweetest pleasure of his life. This mere gratification of his
pride, the pride of an upstart barbarian, at the expense of the
inheritors of a mighty name and the representatives of venerable
traditions, was the object which took him into Italy, rather than any
carefully prepared 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 at some
future day in the most unreasonable of his demands, Attila granted the
ambassadors an 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 the venerable
pontiff, accepted the rich presents which were doubtless laid at his
feet, and turning his face homewards recrossed the Julian Alps, leaving
the Apennines untraversed and Rome unvisited.

Even in the act of granting peace Attila used words which showed that it
would be only a truce, and that (452) if there were any failure to abide
by any one of his conditions, he would return and work yet greater
mischief to Italy than any which she had yet suffered at his hands. But
he had missed the fateful moment, and the delight of standing on the
conquered Palatine, and seeing the smoke ascend from the ruined City of
the World, was never to be his. In the year after his invasion of Italy
he died suddenly at night, apparently the victim of the drunken debauch
with which the polygamous barbarian had celebrated the latest addition
to the numerous company of his wives.

With Attila's death the might of the Hunnish Empire was broken. The
great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robber to
hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons
who emerged from the chambers of his harem was able to exert. Unable to
agree as to the succession of the throne, they talked of dividing the
Hunnish dominions between them, and in the discussions which ensued they
showed too plainly that they looked upon the subject nations as their
slaves, to be partitioned as a large household of such domestics would
be partitioned among the heirs of their dead master. The pride of the
Teutons was touched, and they determined to strike a blow for the
recovery of their lost freedom. Ardaric, king of the Gepidae, so long the
trusty counsellor of Attila, was prime mover in the revolt against his
sons. A battle was fought by the banks of the river Nedao[11] between
the Huns (with those subject allies who still remained faithful to them)
and the revolted nations.

[Footnote 11: Situation unknown, except that it was in Pannonia, that
is, probably in Hungary, somewhere between the Save and the Danube.]

Among these revolted nations there can be but little doubt that the
Ostrogoths held a high place, though the matter is not so clearly stated
as we should have expected, by the Gothic historian, and even on his
showing the glory of the struggle for independence was mainly Ardaric's.
After a terrible battle the Gepidae were victorious, and Ellak, eldest
son of Attila, with, it is said, thirty thousand of 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 him his manner of dying".

The battle of Nedao, whatever may have been the 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
resettlement of 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 became the
humble servants of the Eastern Empire, the Gepidae, perhaps marching
southward occupied the great Hungarian plains on the left bank of the
Danube, which had been the home of Attila and his Huns; and the
Ostrogoths going westwards (perhaps with some dim notion of following
their Visigothic kindred) took up their abode in that which had once
been the Roman 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 south and
one hundred and sixty miles from east to west, whose northern and
eastern sides were washed by the river Danube, and whose north-eastern
corner was formed by the sudden bend to the south which that river
makes, a little above Buda-Pest. This region includes Vienna and the
eastern part of the Archduchy of Austria, Graetz, and the eastern part of
the Duchy of Styria, but it is chiefly composed of the great
corn-growing plain of Western Hungary, and contains the two considerable
lakes of Balaton and Neusiedler See. Here then the three Ostrogothic
brethren took up their abode, and of this province they made a kind of
rude partition between them, while still treating it as one kingdom, of
which Walamir was the head. The precise details of this division of
territory cannot now be recovered,[12] nor are they of much importance,
as the settlement was of short duration. We can only say that Walamir
and Theudemir occupied the two ends of the territory, and Widemir dwelt
between them. What is most interesting to us is the fact that
Theudemir's territory included Lake Balaton (or Platten See), and that
his palace may very possibly have stood upon the shores of that noble
piece of water, which is forty-seven miles in length and varies from
three to nine miles in width. To the neighbourhood of this lake, in the
absence of more precise information, we may with some probability assign
the birth-place and the childish home of Theodoric.[13]

[Illustration: Graphic element.]

[Footnote 12: Jordanes (Getica) says: "Valamer inter Scarniungam et
Aquam Nigram fluvios, Thiudimer juxta lacum Pelsois, Vidimer inter
utrosque manebat". It seems to be hopeless to determine what rivers are
denoted by "Scarniunga" and "Aqua Nigra".]

[Footnote 13: Of course the location of Theudemir's palace on the actual
shore of Lake Balaton can only be treated as a conjecture, but the
pointed way in which Jordanes, in the passage last quoted, speaks of him
as "_juxta_ lacuna Pelsois", seems to make the conjecture a probable
one. Some geographers have identified Pelso Lacus with the Neusiedler
See, but apparently on insufficient grounds.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

THEODORIC'S BOYHOOD.

Inroad of the Huns--Their defeat by Walamir--Birth of Theodoric--War
with the Eastern Empire--Theodoric a hostage--Description of
Constantinople--Its commerce and its monuments.

The Ostrogoths had yet one or two battles to fight before they were
quite rid of their old masters. The sons of Attila still talked of them
as deserters and fugitive slaves, and a day came when Walamir found
himself compelled 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 warriors of his
nation had time to gather round him; and at last, after he had long
wearied the enemy with his defensive tactics, he made a sudden onset,
destroyed the greater part of the Hunnish army, and sent the rest
scattered in hopeless flight far into the deserts of Scythia.[14]

[Footnote 14: Jordanes (cap. iii) says that the fugitive Huns "sought
those parts of Scythia past which flow the streams of the river Dnieper
which the Huns in their own tongue call 'Var' (the river)". If this is
correctly stated it is almost certain that it must describe some battle
which happened _before_ the great Western migration of the Ostrogoths,
which was mentioned in the last chapter, for it would be impossible, if
the Gepidae were in Trans-danubian Hungary and the Ostrogoths in Pannonia
that the Ostrogoths should have driven the Huns into the countries
watered by the Dnieper. I am rather inclined to believe that this
reference of the battle to an earlier period may be the correct
explanation. But Danapri (Dnieper) may be only a blunder of Jordanes,
who is often hopelessly wrong in his geography.]

Walamir at once sent tidings of the victory to his brother Theudemir.
The messenger arrived at an opportune moment, for on that very day
Erelieva, 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 the Ostrogothic 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 here be spoken of under the well-known form
THEODORIC.[15]

[Footnote 15: Jordanes wavers between Theod_e_ricus and Theod_o_ricus.
The Greek historians generally use the form (Greek: Theuderichos).
German scholars seem to prefer Theoderich. As it is useless now to try
to revert to the philologically correct Thiuda-reiks, I use that form of
the name with which I suppose English readers to be most
familiar--namely, Theodoric.]

It will be observed that I have spoken of Erelieva as the unwedded wife
of Theudemir. The Gothic historian calls her his concubine,[16] 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 laxity as 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 have had 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 through
the marriage rite with the woman, really and truly his wife, but
generally his inferior in social position, who meanwhile governed his
house and bore him children. If the separation never came, and the
powerful king's daughter never had to be wooed, she who was wife in all
but name, retained her position unquestioned till her death, and her
children succeeded without dispute to the inheritance of their father.
The nearest approach to an illustration which 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 offspring of such an union. Notwithstanding the
want of strict legitimacy in his position, I do not remember any
occasion on which the taunt of bastard birth was thrown in his teeth,
even by the bitterest of his foes.

[Footnote 16: "Ipso siquidem die Theodoricus ejus filius quamvis de
Erelieva concubina, bonae tamen spei natus est" (Jordanes: Getica, 52).]

It would be satisfactory if we could fix with exactness the great
Ostrogoth's birth-year, but though several circumstances point to 454
as a probable date, we are not able to define it with greater
precision.[17]

[Footnote 17: If there be any truth in the suggestion made above, that
the Hunnish attack on Walamir was made before the Ostrogothic migration
into Pannonia, the birth-year must be moved up to 452.]

The next event of which we are informed in the history of the
Ostrogothic nation, a war with the Eastern Empire, was one destined to
exert a most important influence on the life of the kingly child, The
Ostrogoths settling in Pannonia, one of the provinces of the Roman
Empire, were in theory allies and auxiliary soldiers[18] 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
barbarian tribes in many other provinces. There was sometimes more,
sometimes less, actual truth in the theoretical relations thus
established, and it was one which in the nature of things was not likely
long to endure: but for the time, so long as the Imperial treasury was
tolerably full and the barbarian allies tolerably amenable to control,
the arrangement suited both parties. In the case before us the position
of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia was legalised by the alliance, and such
portions of the political machinery of the Empire as might still 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 the broadswords of his loyal Ostrogoths against the more
savage nations outside, who were ever trying to enter the charmed
circle of the Roman State. But as the Ostrogothic _foederati_ were 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_,[19] sent as _strenae_[20] or New Year's presents,
to the barbarian king and his chief nobles.

[Footnote 18: _Foederati_.]

[Footnote 19: The _solidus aureus_, the chief Imperial coin of this
time, was worth about twelve shillings of our money.]

[Footnote 20: The same word as the French _Etrennes_.]

Now, about the year 461, the Emperor Leo (successor of the brave soldier
Marcian), whether from a special emptiness in the Imperial treasury or
from some other cause, omitted to send the accustomed _strenae_ to the
Ostrogothic brother-kings. Much disturbed at the failure of the _aurei_
to appear, they sent envoys to Constantinople, who returned with tidings
which filled the three palaces of Pannonia with the clamour of angry
men. Not only were the _strenae_ withheld, and likely to be still
withheld, but there was another Goth, a low-born pretender, not of Amal
blood, who was boasting of the title of _foederatus_ of the Empire, and
enjoying the _strenae_ which ought to come only to Amal kings and their
nobles. This man, who was destined to cross the path of our Theodoric
through many weary years, was named like him Theodoric, and was surnamed
Strabo (the squinter) from his devious vision, and son of Triarius, from
his parentage. He was brother-in-law, or nephew, of a certain Aspar, a
successful barbarian, who had mounted high in the Imperial service and
had placed two Emperors on the throne. It was doubtless through his
kinsman's influence that the squinting adventurer had obtained a
position in the court of the Roman Augustus so disproportioned to his
birth, and so outrageous to every loyal Ostrogoth.

When the news of these insults to the lineage of the Amals reached
Pannonia, the three brothers in fury snatched up their arms and laid
waste almost the whole province of Illyricum. Then the Emperor changed
his mind, and desired to 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 be
punctually paid. Only, as a hostage for the observance of peace he
desired that Theudemir's little 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 us
doubt 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-born son, even to the
great Roman Emperor. But his brother Walamir earnestly besought him not
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.[21]

[Footnote 21: An expansion of the words of Jordanes, "et quia puerulus
elegans erat meruit gratiam imperialem habere".]

Thus was the young Ostrogoth brought from his home in Pannonia, by the
banks of lonely Lake Balaton, to the New Rome, the busy and stately city
by the Bosphorus, the city which was now, more truly than her worn and
faded mother by the Tiber, the "Lady of Kingdoms" the "Mistress of the
World". Of the Constantinople which the boyish eyes of Theodoric beheld,
scarcely a vestige now remains for the traveller to gaze upon. Let us
try, therefore, to find a contemporary description. These are the words
in which the visit of the Gothic chief Athanaric to that city about
eighty years previously 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 so great
a city.' Then turning his eyes this way and that, beholding the
situation of the city and the concourse of ships, now he marvels at the
long perspective of lofty walls, then he sees the multitudes of various
nations like the wave gushing forth from one fountain which 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 whoso lifts his hand against him, that man's blood be on his
own head."

Still can we behold "the situation of the city", that unrivalled
situation which no map can adequately explain, but which the traveller
gazes upon from the deck of his vessel as he rounds Seraglio Point, and
the sight of which seems to bind together in one, two continents of
space and twenty-five centuries of time. On his right hand Asia with
her camels, on his left Europe with her railroads. Behind him are the
Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, with their memories of Lysander and
AEgospotami, of Hero, Leander, and Byron, with the throne of Xerxes and
the tomb of Achilles, and farther back still the island-studded
Archipelago, the true cradle of the Greek nation. Immediately in 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 covered with fields and gardens when Theodoric
beheld it. There also in front of him, but a little to the right, comes
rushing down the impetuous Bosphorus, that river which is also an arm of
the sea. Lined now with the marble palaces of bankrupt Sultans, it was
once a lonely and 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 pressed the adventurous
mariners of Miletus in those early voyages which opened up the Euxine to
the Greeks, as the voyage of Columbus opened up the Atlantic to the
Spaniards. It is impossible now to survey the beautiful panorama without
thinking of that great inland sea which, as we 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 of Theudemir's court, who brought the
young Theodoric to his new patron, may have looked northwards too,
remembering the sagas about the mighty Hermanric, who dwelt where now
the Russians dwell, and the fateful march of the terrible Huns across
the shallows of the Sea of Azof.

The great physical features of the scene are of course unchanged, but
almost everything else, how changed by four centuries and a half 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, flowing through the streets, is delightful to
the traveller; but if he be more of an archaeologist than an artist, and
seeks to reproduce before his mind's eye something of the Constantinople
of the Caesars rather than the Stamboul of the Sultans, he will
experience a bitter disappointment in finding how little of the former
is left.

He may still see indeed the land-ward walls of the city, and a most
interesting historical relic they are.[22] They stretch for about four
miles, 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 with towers at frequent
intervals, some square, some octagonal, and deep fosses running along
beside 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, and ruinous and dismantled as
they are after fourteen centuries of siege, of earthquake, and of
neglect, they still help us vividly to imagine what they must have
looked like when the young Theodoric beheld them little more than ten
years after their erection.[23]

[Footnote 22: For the fact that these walls are still visible we have to
thank the good offices of a recent British ambassador, I believe Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe. The Sultana Valide (Sultan's mother) had
obtained from her son an order to pull down the walls, and sell the
materials for the benefit of her privy purse. The ambassador, however,
protested against this act of Ottomanism (rather than Vandalism), and
the walls were saved.]

[Footnote 23: The walls of Constantinople were first built in 412, but
having been much injured by an earthquake were rebuilt (we are told in
the short space of sixty days) by the Prefect of the City, Constantine,
at the command of Theodosius II. This rebuilding, which was partly due
to the terror caused by Attila, took place in the year 447.]

Of the gates, some six or seven in number, two are especially
interesting to us. The first is the Tep-Kapou (Cannon Gate), or Porta
Sancti Romani. This was the weakest part of the fortifications of
Constantinople, the "heel of Achilles", as it has been well called,[24]
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 rests on two Corinthian pilasters. Through this
gateway--the nearest representative of the Capitoline Hill at Rome--the
Eastern Emperors rode in triumphant procession when a new Augustus had
to be proclaimed, or when an enemy of the Republic had been defeated. It
is possible that 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: possible too that the great but
unsuccessful expedition planned by the joint forces of the East and West
against the Vandals of Africa may have had its ignominious failure
hidden from the people 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 given by Mohammed, the
Conqueror, immediately after his entry into the city, through fear of an
old Turkish prophecy, which declared that through this gate the next
conquerors should enter Constantinople.

[Footnote 24: By Dr. Dethier. "Bosphore et Constantinople", p. 51.]

Of the palace of the Emperor, into which the young Goth was ushered by
the eunuch-chamberlain, no vestige probably now remains. The Seraglio
has replaced the Palation, and is itself now abandoned to loneliness and
decay, being only the recipient of one annual visit from the Sultan,
when he goes in state to kiss the cloak of Mohammed. The great mosque of
St. Sophia on the right is a genuine and a glorious monument of Imperial
Constantinople, but not of Constantinople as Theodoric saw it. The
basilica, in which he probably listened with childish bewilderment to
many a sermon for or against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon,
was burnt down sixty years after his visit in the great Insurrection of
the "Nika", and the noble edifice in which ten thousand Mussulmans now
assemble to listen to the reading of the Koran, while above them the
Arabic names of the companions of the Prophet replace the mosaics of the
Evangelists, is itself the work of the great Emperor Justinian, the
destroyer of the State which Theodoric founded.

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