Theodoric the Goth Part 13

When tidings of these events were brought to Verona by the Grand Chamberlain Triwan (or Trigguilla) who, as an Arian, was suspected of favouring the Jews, and when the Hebrews came themselves to invoke the justice of the King, Theodoric's righteous indignation was kindled against these flagrant violations of _civilitas_. It was not, indeed, the first time that his intervention had been claimed on behalf of the persecuted children of Israel. At Milan and at Genoa they had already appealed to him against the vexations of their neighbours, and at Rome the mob, excited by some idle story of harsh punishments inflicted by the Jews on their Christian servants, had burned their synagogue in the Trastevere to the ground. The protection claimed had always been freely conceded. Theodoric, while expressing or permitting Ca.s.siodorus to express his pious wonder that a race which wilfully shut itself out from the eternal rest of Heaven should care for quietness on earth, was strong in declaring that for the sake of _civilitas_ justice was to be secured even for the wanderers from the right religious path, and that no one should be forced to believe in Christianity against his will. Nor was this willingness to protect the Jews from popular fanaticism peculiar to Theodoric. Always, so long as the Goths, either the Western or Eastern branch, remained Arian, the Jews found favour in their eyes, and Jacob had rest under the shadow of the sons of Odin. Now, therefore, the king sent an edict addressed to Eutharic and Bishop Peter, ordaining that a pecuniary contribution should be levied on all the Christian citizens of Ravenna, out of which the synagogues should be rebuilt, and that those who were not able to pay their share of this contribution should be flogged through the streets, the crier going behind them and in a loud voice proclaiming their offence. The order was doubtless obeyed, but from that day there was a secret spirit of rebellion in the hearts of the Roman citizens of Ravenna.

From this time onward occasions of difference between Theodoric and his Roman subjects were frequently arising. For some reason which is not explained to us, he ordered the Catholic church of St. Stephen in the suburbs of Verona to be destroyed. Then came suspicion, the child of rancour. An order was put forth forbidding the inhabitants of Roman origin to wear any arms, and this prohibition extended even to pocket-knives. In the excited state of men's minds earth and heaven seemed to them to be full of portents..There were earthquakes; there was a comet with a fiery tail which blazed for fifteen days; a poor Gothic woman lay down under a portico near Theodoric's palace at Ravenna and gave birth (so we are a.s.sured) to four dragons, two of which, having one head between them, were captured, while the other two, sailing away eastward through the clouds, were seen to fall headlong into the sea.

More important than these old wives' fables was the changed att.i.tude and the wavering loyalty of the Roman Senate. From the remarks made in an earlier chapter,[128] it will be clear that a conscientious Roman citizen might truly feel that he owed a divided allegiance to the Ostrogoth, his ruler _de facto_, and to the Augustus at Constantinople, his sovereign _de jure_. Through the years of religious schism this conflict of duties had slumbered, but now, with the enthusiastic reconciliation between the see of Rome and the throne of Constantinople, it awoke; and in that age when, as has been already said, religion was nationality, an orthodox Eastern emperor seemed a much more fitting object of homage than an Arian Italian king.

[Footnote 128: See p. 155.]

There were two men, united by the ties of kindred, who seemed marked out by character and position as the leaders of a patriotic party in the Senate, if such a party could be formed. These men were Bothius and his father-in-law Symmachus, both Roman n.o.bles of the great and ancient Anician _gens_. Bothius, whose name we have already met with as the skilful mechanic who was requested to construct a water-clock and a sun-dial for the king of the Burgundians, was a man of great and varied accomplishments--philosopher, theologian, musician, and mathematician.

He had translated thirty books of Aristotle into Latin for the benefit of his countrymen; his treatise on Music was for many centuries the authoritative exposition of the science of harmony. He had held the high honour of the consuls.h.i.+p in 510; twelve years later he had the yet higher honour of seeing his two sons, Symmachus and Bothius, though mere lads, arrayed in the _trabea_ of the consul.

Symmachus the other leader of the patriotic party in the Roman Senate had memories of ill.u.s.trious ancestors behind him. A century before, another Symmachus had been the standard-bearer of the old Pagan party, and had delivered two great orations in order to prevent the Christian Emperors from removing the venerable Altar of Victory from the Senate-house. Now, his descendant and namesake was an equally firm adherent of Christianity, a friend and counsellor of Popes, a man who was willing to encounter obloquy and even death in behalf of Nicene orthodoxy. He had been consul so long ago as in the reign of Odovacar, he had been an "Ill.u.s.trious" Prefect of the City under Theodoric; he was now Patrician and Chief of the Senate (Caput Senatus). The last two t.i.tles conferred honour rather than power; the heads.h.i.+p of the Senate especially being generally held by the oldest, and if not by the oldest, by the most esteemed and venerated member 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 adornment of his native city.

Bothius, left an orphan in childhood, had enjoyed the wise training of his guardian Symmachus. When he came to man's estate he married that guardian's daughter Rusticiana. Though there was the difference of a generation between them, a close friends.h.i.+p united the old and the middle-aged senators, and the young 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, Bothius appears to have enjoyed to the full the favour of Theodoric. From a chapter of his autobiography[129] we learn that he had already often opposed the ministers of the crown when he found them to be unjust and rapacious men. "How often" says he, "have I met the rush of Cunigast, when coming open-mouthed to devour the substance of the poor! How often have I baffled the all but completed schemes of injustice prepared by the chamberlain Trigguilla! How often have I interposed my influence to protect the unhappy men whom the unpunished avarice of the barbarians was worrying with infinite calumnies! Paulinus, a man of consular rank, whose wealth the hungry dogs of the palace had already devoured in fancy, I dragged as it were out of their very jaws". But all these acts of righteous remonstrance against official tyranny, though from the names given they seem to have been chiefly directed against Gothic ministers, had not forfeited for Bothius the favour of his sovereign. The proof of this is furnished by the almost unexampled honour conferred upon him--certainly with Theodoric's consent--by the elevation of his two sons to the consuls.h.i.+p.

The exultant father, from his place in the Senate, expressed his thanks to Theodoric in an oration of panegyric, which is now no longer extant, but was considered by contemporaries a masterpiece of brilliant rhetoric.

[Footnote 129: Contained in the "Consolation of Philosophy".]

So far all had gone well with the fortunes of Bothius; but now, perhaps about the middle of 523, there came a great and calamitous change. We must revert for a few minutes to the family circ.u.mstances of Theodoric, in order to understand the influences which were embittering his spirit against his Catholic--that is to say, his Roman--subjects. The year before, his grandson Segeric, the Burgundian, had been treacherously a.s.sa.s.sinated by order of his father, King Sigismund, who had become a convert to the orthodox creed, and after the death of Theodoric's daughter had married a 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 persecutors of the Catholic Church, but himself a convert to her creed. Notwithstanding an oath which Hilderic had sworn to his predecessor on his death-bed, never to use his royal power for the restoration of the churches to the Catholics, Hilderic had recalled the Bishops of the orthodox party 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 twenty years queen of the Vandals, pa.s.sionately resented this undoing of her dead husband's work and put 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. Amalafrida herself was taken captive and shut up in prison, probably about the middle of 523.

Thus everywhere the Arian League, of which Theodoric had been the head, and which had practically given him the hegemony of Teutonic Europe, was breaking down; and in its collapse disaster and violent death were coming upon the members of Theodoric's own family. If Eutharic himself, as seems probable, had died before this time, and was no longer at the King's side to whisper distrust of the Catholics at every step, and to put the worst construction on the actions of every patriotic Roman, yet even Eutharic's death increased the difficulties of Theodoric's position, and his doubts as to the future fortunes of a dynasty which would be represented at his death only by a woman and a child. And these difficulties and doubts bred in him not depression, but an irascible and suspicious temper, which had hitherto been altogether foreign to his calm and n.o.ble nature.

Such was the state of things at the court of 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 royal rule of Theodoric. Of the character and history of Albinus, notwithstanding his eminent station, we know but little. He was not only Patrician, but Ill.u.s.tris--that is, in modern phraseology, he had held an office of cabinet-rank. On the occasion of some quarrel between the factions of the Circus, Theodoric had graciously ordered him to a.s.sume the patronage of the Green Faction, and to conduct the election of a pantomimic performer for that party. He had also received permission to erect workshops overlooking the Forum on its northern side, on condition that his buildings did not in any way interfere with public convenience or the beauty of the city. Evidently he was a man of wealth and high position, one of the great n.o.bles of Rome, but perhaps one who, up to this time, had not taken any very prominent part in public affairs. His accuser, Cyprian, still apparently a young man, was also a Roman n.o.bleman. His father 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 duty was to ascertain from the suitor what was the nature of his plea, to state it to the king, and then to draw up the doc.u.ment, which contained the king's judgment. It was an arduous office to ascertain from the flurried and often trembling suitor, in the midst of the hubbub of the court, the precise nature of his complaint, and a responsible one to express the king's judgment, neither less nor more, in the written decree. There was evidently great scope for corrupt conduct in both capacities, if the Referendarius was open to bribes; and in the "Formula", by which these officers were appointed, some stress is laid on the necessity of their keeping a pure conscience in the exercise of their functions. Cyprian seems to have been a man of nimble and subtle intellect, who excelled in his statement of a case. So well was this done by him, from the two opposite points of view, that plaintiff and defendant in turn were charmed to hear each his own version of the case so admirably presented to the king. Of later years, Theodoric, weary of sitting in state in the crowded hall of justice, had often tried his cases on horseback. Riding forth into the forest he had ordered Cyprian 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, when Theodoric 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, the temporary a.s.serter of the claim, brought it under his notice. Thus trained to subtle eloquence, Cyprian had been recently sent on an emba.s.sy to Constantinople, and had there shown himself in the word-fence a match for the keenest of the Greeks.

Lately returned, as it should seem, from this emba.s.sy, he came forward in the Roman Senate and accused the Patrician Albinus of outstepping the bounds of loyalty to the Ostrogothic King in the letters which he had addressed to the Byzantine Emperor.

In this accusation was Cyprian acting the part of an honest man or of a base informer? The times were difficult: the relations of a 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 faithful servant of Theodoric, who had in his emba.s.sy at Constantinople discovered the threads of a treasonable intrigue, and who would not see his master betrayed even by Romans without denouncing their treason. As a real patriot he may have seen that the days of purely Roman rule in Italy were over, that there must be some sort of amalgamation with these new Teutonic conquerors, who evidently had the empire of the world before them, that it would be better and happier, and in a certain sense more truly Roman, for Italy to be ruled by a heroic "King of the Goths and Romans" than for her to sink into a mere province ruled by exarchs and logothetes from corrupt and distant Constantinople. This is one possible view of Cyprian's character and purposes. On the other hand, he may have been a slippery adventurer, intent on carving out his own fortune by whatever means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the n.o.blest of his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition. In his secret heart he may have cared nothing for the n.o.ble old Goth, his master, with whom he had so often ridden in the pine-wood; nothing, too, for the great name of Rome, the city in which his father had 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 Greece had nothing to teach him that was new, may have had in his inmost soul no belief in G.o.d, in country, or in duty, but in Cyprian alone. Both views are possible; we have before us only the pa.s.sionate invectives of his foes and the stereotyped commendations of his virtues penned by his official superiors, and I will not attempt to decide between them.

When Cyprian brought his charge of disloyalty against 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 which Bothius claimed to speak The attention of all men was naturally fixed upon him, for by the King's favour, the same favour which in the preceding year had raised his two sons to the consuls.h.i.+p, he was now filling the great place of Master of the Offices.[130]

"False", said Bothius in loud, impa.s.sioned tones, "is the accusation of Cyprian; but whatever Albinus did, I and the whole Senate of Rome, with one purpose, did the same. The charge is false, O King Theodoric".The inter-position of Bothius was due to a n.o.ble and generous impulse, but it was not perhaps wise, in view of all that had pa.s.sed, and without in any way helping Albinus, it involved Bothius in his ruin. Cyprian, thus challenged, included the Master of the Offices in his accusation, and certain persons, not Goths, but Romans and men of senatorial rank, Opilio (the brother of Cyprian), Basilius, and Gaudentius, came forward and laid information against Bothius.

[Footnote 130: See p. 150.]

Here the reader will naturally ask, "Of what did these informers accuse him?" but to that question it is not possible to give a satisfactory answer. He himself in his meditations on his trial says: "Of what crime is it that I am accused? 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 doc.u.ments in order to prove the Senate guilty of high treason. Shall I deny the charge? But I did wish for the safety of the Senate and shall never cease to wish for it, nor, though they have abandoned me, can I consider it a crime to have desired the safety of that venerable order. That posterity may know the truth and the real sequence of events, I have drawn up a written memorandum concerning the whole affair. For, as for these forged letters upon which is founded the accusation against me of having hoped for Roman freedom, why should I say anything about them? Their falsehood would have been made manifest, if I could have used the confession of the informers themselves, which in all such affairs is admitted to have the greatest weight. As for Roman freedom, 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 questioned by the Emperor Caligula as to his complicity in a a conspiracy formed against him. If I, said he, had known, thou shouldest never have known."

These words, coupled with some bitter statements as to the tainted character of the informers against him, men oppressed by debt and accused of peculation, const.i.tute the only statement of his case by Bothius which is now available. The memorandum so carefully prepared in the long hours of his imprisonment has not reached posterity. Would that it might even yet be found in the library of some monastery, or lurking as a palimpsest under the dull commentary of some medival divine! It could hardly fail to throw a brilliant, if not uncoloured light on the politics of Italy in the sixth century. But, trying as we best may to spell out the truth of the affair from the pa.s.sionate complaints of the prisoner, I think we may discern that there had been some correspondence on political affairs between the Senate and the Emperor Justin, correspondence which was perfectly regular and proper if the Emperor was still to them "Dominus Noster" (our Lord and Master), but which was kept from the knowledge of "the King of the Goths and Romans", and which, when he heard of it, he was sure to resent as an act of treachery to himself. That Bothius, the Master of the Offices under Theodoric, should have connived at this correspondence, naturally exasperated the master who had so lately heaped favours on this disloyal servant. But in addition to this he used the power which he wielded as Master of the Offices, that is, head of the whole Civil Service of Italy, to prevent some doc.u.ments which would have compromised the safety of the Senate from coming to the knowledge of Theodoric. All this was dangerous and doubtful work, and though we may find it hard to condemn Bothius, drawn as he was in opposite directions by the claims of historic patriotism and by those of official duty, we can hardly wonder that Theodoric, who felt his throne and his dynasty menaced, should have judged with some severity the minister who had thus betrayed his confidence.

The political charge against Bothius was blended with one of another kind, to us almost unintelligible, a charge of sacrilege and necromancy.

At least this seems to be the only possible explanation of the following words written by him: "My accusers saw that the charge 'of desiring the safety of the Senate' was no crime but rather a merit; and therefore, in order to darken it by the mixture of some kind of wickedness, they falsely declared that ambition for office had led me to pollute my conscience with sacrilege. But Philosophy had chased from my breast all desire of worldly greatness, and under the eyes of her who had daily instilled into my mind the Pythagorean maxim 'Follow G.o.d,' there was no place for sacrilege. Nor was it likely that I should seek the guardians.h.i.+p of the meanest of spirits when Divine Philosophy had formed and moulded me into the likeness of G.o.d. The friends.h.i.+p of my father-in-law, the venerable Symmachus, ought alone to have s.h.i.+elded me from the suspicion of such a crime. But alas! it was my very love for Philosophy that exposed me to this accusation, and they thought that I was of kin to sorcerers because I was steeped in philosophic teachings".

The only reasonable explanation that we can offer of these words is that medival superst.i.tion was already beginning to cast her shadow over Europe, that already great mechanical skill, such as Bothius was reputed to possess when his king asked him to manufacture the water-clock and the sun-dial, caused its possessor to be suspected of unholy familiarity with the Evil One; perhaps also that astronomy, which was evidently the favourite study of Bothius, was perilously near to astrology, and that his zeal in its pursuit may have exposed him to some of the penalties which the Theodosian code itself, the law-book of Imperial Rome, denounced against "the mathematicians".

This seems to be all that can now be done towards re-writing the lost indictment under which Bothius was accused. The trial was conducted with an outrageous disregard of the forms of justice. It took place in the Senate-house at Rome; Bothius was apparently languis.h.i.+ng in prison at Pavia, where he had been arrested along with Albinus.[131] Thus at a distance of more than four hundred miles from his accusers and his judges was the life of this n.o.ble Roman, unheard and undefended, sworn away on obscure and preposterous charges by a process which was the mere mockery of a trial. He was sentenced to death and the confiscation of his property; and the judges whose trembling lips p.r.o.nounced the monstrous sentence were the very senators whose cause he had tried to serve. This thought, the remembrance of this base ingrat.i.tude, planted the sharpest sting of all in the breast of the condemned patriot. It is evident that the Senate themselves were in desperate fear of the newly awakened wrath of Theodoric, and the fact that they found Bothius guilty cannot be considered as in any degree increasing the probability of the truth of the charges made against him. But it does perhaps somewhat lessen his reputation for far-seeing statesmans.h.i.+p, since it shows how thoroughly base and worthless was the body for whose sake he sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the political firmament.

[Footnote 131: Bothius complains thus: "Now, at a distance of nearly five hundred miles, unheard and undefended, I have been condemned to death and proscription for my too enthusiastic love to the Senate".

Pavia, where he seems to have been first confined, was, according to the Antonine Itinerary, 455 Roman miles from the capital.]

Bothius seems to have spent some months in prison after his trial, and was perhaps transferred from Pavia to "the _ager Calventia.n.u.s_", a few miles from Milan. There at any rate he was confined when the messenger of death sent 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 whom I have chiefly followed, who was almost a contemporary, but a credulous one, says that torture was applied, that a cord was twisted round his forehead till his eyes started from their sockets, and that finally in the midst of his torments he received the _coup de grce_ from a club.

In the interval which elapsed between the condemnation and the death of this n.o.ble man, who died verily as a martyr for the great memories of Rome, he had time to compose a book which exercised a powerful influence on many of the most heroic spirits of the Middle Ages. This book, the well-known, if not now often read, "Consolation of Philosophy", was translated into English by King Alfred and by Geoffrey Chaucer, was imitated by Sir Thomas More (whose history in some respects resembles that of Bothius), and was translated into every tongue and found in every convent library of medival Europe. There is a great charm, the charm of sadness, about many of its pages, and it may be considered from one point of view as the swan's song of the dying Roman world and the dying Greek philosophy, or from another, as the Book of Job of the new medival 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 a Righteous 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 of religion, or at any rate not of revealed religion, which is here administered. So marked is the silence of Bothius on all those arguments, which a discussion of this kind inevitably suggests to the mind of a believer in the Crucified One, that scholars long supposed that he was not even by profession a Christian. A ma.n.u.script which has been lately discovered[132] seems to prove beyond a doubt that Bothius was a Christian, and wrote orthodox treatises on disputed points of theology; but for some reason or other he fell back on his early philosophical studies, rather than on his formal and conventional Christianity, when he found himself in the deep waters of adversity and imminent death. He represents himself in the "Consolation" as lying on his dungeon-couch, sick in body and sad at heart, and courting the Muses as companions of his solitude. They come at his call, but are soon unceremoniously dismissed by one n.o.bler than themselves, who a.s.serts an older and higher right to cheer her 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 mysteriously blended in her countenance. Having dismissed the Muses, she sits by the bedside of Bothius and 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 fort.i.tude and hope; she reasons with him as to the instability of the gifts of Fortune, and strives to lead him to the contemplation of the _Summum Bonum_, which is G.o.d 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-wise and Almighty One, she enters into a discussion of the relation between Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free-will, but this discussion, a th.o.r.n.y and difficult one, is not ended when the book comes to an abrupt conclusion, being probably interrupted by the arrival of the messengers of Theodoric, who brought the warrant for the writer's execution.

[Footnote 132: Called the "Anecdoton Holderi", from the German scholar who has edited it.]

The "Consolation of Philosophy" is partly in prose, partly in verse. The prose is generally strong, clear, and comparatively pure in style, wonderfully superior to the vapid diffusiveness of Ca.s.siodorus and most writers of the age. The interspersed poems are sometimes in hexameters, but more often in the shorter lines and more varied 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 important a work and one of such far-reaching influence as the "Consolation" but the following translation of one of the poems in which the prisoner makes his moan to the Almighty may give the reader some little idea of the style and matter of the treatise.

THE HARMONY OF THE NATURAL WORLD: THE DISCORD OF 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, s.h.i.+nes eastward far, Phosphor now, for the Sun's inbringing.

When the leaves fall fast, 'neath Autumn's blast, 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 dropped in 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 tossings high; Let them own Thy bound and ban: And as Thou rulest the starry sky Rule also the world of Man!

[Ill.u.s.tration: COPPER PIECE OF ATHALARIC. TEN NUMMI.

(HEAD OF JUSTINIAN--?)]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIV.

HEODORIC'S TOMB.