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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]





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]





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.



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.



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.



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 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.



I have had occasion many times in the preceding pages to write the name

of Ravenna, the residence of most of the sovereigns of the sinking

Empire, and now the home of Theodoric. Let me attempt in a few

paragraphs to give some faint idea of the impression which this city, a

boulder-stone left by the icedrift of the dissolving Empire amid the

green fields of modern civilisation, produces on the mind of a

traveller.



Ravenna stands in a great alluvial plain between the Apennines, the

Adriatic, and the Po. The fine mud, which has been for centuries poured

over the land by the streams descending from the mountains, has now

silted up her harbour, and Classis, the maritime suburb of Ravenna,

which, in the days of Odovacar and Theodoric, was a busy sea port on the

Adriatic, now consists of one desolate church--magnificent in its

desolation--and two or three farm-buildings standing in the midst of a

lonely and fever-haunted rice-swamp. Between the city and the sea

stretches for miles the glorious pine-forest, now alas! cruelly maimed

by the hands of Nature and of Man, by the frost of one severe winter and

by the spades of the builders of a railway, but still preserving some

traces of its ancient beauty. Here it was that Theodoric pitched his

camp when for three weary years he blockaded his rival's last

stronghold, and here by the deep trench (fossatum), which he had dug

to guard that camp, he fought the last and not the least deadly of his

fights, when Odovacar made his desperate sortie from the famine-stricken

town. Memories of a gentler kind, but still not wanting in sadness, now

cluster round the solemn avenues of the Pineta. There we still seem to

see Dante wandering, framing his lay of the selva oscura, through

which lay his path to the unseen world, and ever looking in vain for the

arrival of the messenger who should summon him back to ungrateful

Florence. There, in Boccaccio's story, a maiden's hapless ghost is for

ever pursued through the woods by the spectre-huntsman, Guido

Cavalcanti, whom her cruelty had driven to suicide. And there, in our

fathers' days, rode Byron, like Dante, an exile, if self-exiled, from

his country, and feeding on bitter remembrances of past praise and

present blame, both too lightly bestowed by his countrymen.



We leave the pine-wood and the desolate-looking rice-fields, we cross

over the sluggish streams--Ronco and Montone--and we stand in the

streets of historic Ravenna. Our first thoughts are all of

disappointment. There is none of the trim beauty of a modern city, nor,

as we at first think, is there any of the endless picturesqueness of a

well-preserved mediaeval city. We look in vain for any building like

Giotto's Campanile at Florence, for any space like that noble,

crescent-shaped Forum, full of memories of the Middle Ages, the Piazzo

del Campo of Siena. We see some strange but not altogether beautiful

bell-towers and one or two brown cupolas breaking the sky-line, but that

seems to be all, and our first feeling as I have said, is one of

disappointment. But when we enter the churches, if we have leisure to

study, them, if we can let their spirit mingle with our spirits, if we

can quietly ask them what they have to tell us of the Past, all

disappointment vanishes. For Ravenna is to those who will study her

attentively a very Pompeii of the fifth century, telling us as much

concerning those years of the falling Empire and the rising Mediaeval

Church as Pompeii can tell us of the social life of the Romans in the

days of triumphant Paganism.



Not that the record is by any means perfect. Many leaves have been torn

out of the book by the childish conceit of recent centuries, which

vainly imagined that they could write something instead, which any

mortal would now care to read. The destroying hand of the so-called

Renaissance has passed over these churches, defacing sometimes the

chancel, sometimes the nave. One of the most interesting of the churches

of Ravenna[120] has the cupola disfigured by wretched paintings which

mislead the eye in following the lines of the building. Another[121]

has its apse covered with those gilt spangles and clouds and cherubs

which were the eighteenth century's ideal of impressive religious art.

The Duomo, which should have been one of the mosf interesting of all the

monuments of Ravenna, was almost entirely rebuilt in the last century,

and is now scarcely worth visiting. Still, enough remains in the

un-restored churches of Ravenna to captivate the attention of every

student of history and every lover of early Christian art. It is only

necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent

embellishers, as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar

gossipers while listening to some noble and entrancing piece of sacred

music.



Thus concentrating our attention on that which is really interesting and

venerable in these churches, while we admire their long colonnades,

their skilful use of ancient columns--some of which may probably have

adorned the temples of Olympian deities in the days of the

Emperors,--and the exceedingly rich and beautiful new forms of capitals,

of a design quite unknown to Vitruvius, which the genius of Romanesque

artists has invented, we find that our chief interest is derived from

the mosaics with which these churches were once so lavishly adorned.

Mosaic, as is well-known, is the most permanent of all the processes of

decorative art. Fresco must fade sooner or later, and where there is any

tendency to damp, it fades with cruel rapidity. Oil painting on canvas

changes its tone in the long course of years, and the boundary line

between cleaning and repainting is difficult to observe. But the

fragments out of which the mosaic picture is formed, having been already

passed through the fire, will keep their colour for centuries, we might

probably say for millenniums. Damp injures them not, except by lessening

the cement with which they are fastened to the wall, and therefore when

restore tion of a mosaic picture becomes necessary, a really

conscientious restorer can always reproduce the picture with precisely

the same form and colour which it had when the last stone was inserted

by the original artist. And thus, when we visit Ravenna, we have the

satisfaction of feeling that we are (in many cases) looking upon the

very same picture which was gazed upon by the contemporaries of

Theodoric. Portraits of Theodoric himself, unfortunately we have none;

but we have two absolutely contemporary portraits of Justinian, the

overturner of his kingdom, and one of Justinian's wife, the celebrated

Theodora. These pictures, it is interesting to remember, were

considerably older when Cimabue found Giotto in the sheepfolds drawing

sheep upon a tile, than any picture of Cimabue's or Giotto's is at the

present time.



Let us enter the church which is now called S. Apollinare within the

Walls, but which in the time of Theodoric was called the Church of S.

Martin, often with the addition de Caelo Aureo, on account of the

beautiful gilded ceiling which distinguished it from the other basilicas

of Ravenna. This church was built by order of Theodoric, who apparently

intended it to be his own royal chapel. Probably, therefore, the great

Ostrogoth many a time saw the Divine mysteries celebrated here by

bishops and priests of the Arian communion. Two long colonnades fill the

nave of the church. The columns are classical, with Corinthian capitals,

and are perhaps brought from some older building. A peculiarity of the

architecture consists in the high abacus--a frustum of an inverted

pyramid--which is interposed between the capital of the column and the

arch that springs from it, as if to give greater height than the columns

alone would afford. Such in its main features was the Church of St.

Martin of the Golden Heaven, when Theodoric worshipped under its

gorgeous roof. But its chief adornment, the feature which makes more

impression on the beholder than anything else in Ravenna, was added

after Theodoric's death, yet not so long after but that it may be

suitably alluded to here as a specimen of the style of decoration which

his eyes must have been wont to look upon. About the year 560, after the

downfall of the Gothic monarchy, Agnellus, the Catholic Bishop of

Ravenna, reconciled this church, that is, re-consecrated it for the

performance of worship by orthodox priests, and in doing so adorned the

attics of the nave immediately above the colonnades with two remarkable

mosaic friezes, each representing a long procession.



On the north wall of the church we behold a procession of Virgin

Martyrs. They are twenty-four in number, a little larger than life, and

are chiefly those maidens who suffered in the terrible persecution of

Diocletian. The place from which they start is a seaport town with ships

entering the harbour, domes and columns and arcades showing over the

walls of the city. An inscription tells us that we have here represented

the city of Classis, the seaport of Ravenna. By the time that we have

reached the last figure in this long procession we are almost at the

east end of the nave. Here we see the Virgin-mother throned in glory

with the infant Jesus on her lap, and two angels on each side of her.

But between the procession and the throne is interposed the group of the

three Wise Men, in bright-coloured raiment, with tiara-like crowns upon

their heads, stooping forward as if with eager haste[122] to present

their various oblations to the Divine Child.



On the right, or south wall of the church, a similar procession of

martyred men, twenty-six in number, seems to move along, in all the

majesty of suffering, bearing their crowns of martyrdom as offerings to

the Redeemer. The Christ is here not an infant but a full-grown man, the

Man of Sorrows, His head encircled with a nimbus, and two angels are

standing on either side. The martyr-procession starts from a building,

with pediment above and three arches resting upon pillars below. The

intervals between the pillars are partly filled with curtains looped up

in a curious fashion and with bright purple spots upon them. An

inscription on this building tells us that it is PALATIUM, that is

Theodoric's palace at Ravenna.



In both these processions the representation is, of course, far from the

perfection of Art. Both the faces and the figures have a certain

stiffness, partly due to the very nature of mosaic-work. There is also a

sort of child-like simplicity in the treatment, especially of the female

figures, which an unsympathetic critic would call grotesque. But, I

think, most beholders feel that there is something indescribably solemn

in these two great mosaic pictures in S. Apollinare Dentro. From the

glaring, commonplace Italian town with its police-notices and its

proclamation of the number of votes given to the government of Vittorio

Emmanuele, you step into the grateful shade of the church and find

yourself transported into the sixth century after Christ. You are

looking on the faces of the men and maidens who suffered death with

torture rather than deny their Lord. For thirteen centuries those two

processions have seemed to be moving on upon the walls of the basilica,

and another ceaseless procession of worshippers, Goths, Byzantines,

Lombards, Franks, Italians, has been in reality moving on beneath them

to the grave. And then you remind yourself that when the artist sketched

those figures on the walls, he was separated by no longer interval than

three long lives would have bridged over, from the days of the

persecution itself, that there were still men living on the earth who

worshipped the Olympian Jupiter, and that the name of Mohammed, son of

Abdallah, was unknown in the world. So, as you gaze, the telescope of

the historic imagination does its work, and the far-off centuries become

near.



One or two other Arian churches built during Theodoric's reign in the

northern suburb of the city have now entirely disappeared. There still

remains, however, the church which Theodoric seems to have built as the

cathedral of the Arian community, while leaving the old metropolitan

church (Ecclesia Ursiana, now the Duomo) as the cathedral of the

Catholics. This Arian cathedral was dedicated to St. Theodore, but has

in later ages been better known as the church of the Holy Spirit.

Tasteless restoration has robbed it of the mosaics which it doubtless

once possessed, but it has preserved its fine colonnade consisting of

fourteen columns of dark green marble with Corinthian capitals, whose

somewhat unequal height seems to show that they, like so many of their

sisters, have been brought from some other building, where they have

once perhaps served other gods.



Through the court-yard of the Church of San Spirito, we approach a

little octagonal building known both as the Oratory of S. Maria in

Cosmedia and as the Arian Baptistery. The great octagonal font, which

once stood in the centre of the building, has disappeared, but we can

easily reconstruct it in our imaginations from the similar one which

still remains in the Catholic Baptistery. The interest of this building

consists in the mosaics of its cupola. On the disk, in the centre, is

represented the Baptism of Christ. The Saviour stands, immersed up to

His loins, in the Jordan, whose water flowing past Him is depicted with

a quaint realism. The Baptist stands on His left side and holds one hand

over His head. On the right of the Saviour stands an old man, who is

generally said to represent the River-god, and the reed in his hand, the

urn, from which water gushes, under his arms, certainly seem to favour

this supposition. But in order to avoid so strange a medley of

Christianity and heathenism it has been suggested that the figure may be

meant for Moses, and in confirmation of this theory some keen-eyed

beholders have thought they perceived the symbolical horned rays

proceeding from each side of the old man's forehead.



Round this central disk are seen the figures of the twelve Apostles.

They are divided into two bands of six each, who seem marching, with

crowns in their hands, towards a throne covered with a veil and a

cushion, on which rests a cross blazing with jewels. St. Peter stands on

the right of the throne, St. Paul on the left; and these two Apostles

carry instead of crowns, the one the usual keys, and the other two rolls

of parchment. The interest of these figures, though they have something

of the stern majesty of early mosaic-work, is somewhat lessened by the

fact that they have undergone considerable restoration. It is suggested,

I know not whether on sufficient grounds, that the figures of the

Apostles were added when the Baptistery was reconciled to the Catholic

worship after the overthrow of the Gothic dominion.



Two more buildings at Ravenna which are connected with the name of

Theodoric require to be noticed by us,--his Palace and his Tomb. The

story of his Tomb, however, will be best told when his reign is ended.

As for the Palace, which once occupied a large space in the eastern

quarter of the city, we have seen that there is a representation of it

in mosaic on the walls of S. Apollinare Dentro. Closely adjoining that

church, and facing the modern Corso Garibaldi, is a wall about five and

twenty feet high, built of square brick-tiles, which has in its upper

storey one large and six small arched recesses, the arches resting on

columns. Only the front is ancient--it is admitted that the building

behind it is modern. Low down in the wall, so low that the citizens of

Ravenna, in passing, brush it with their sleeves, is a bath-shaped

vessel of porphyry, which in the days of archaeological ignorance used

to be shown to strangers as the coffin of Theodoric, but the fact is

that its history and its purpose are entirely unknown.



This shell of a building is called in the Ravenna Guide-books the

Palace of Theodoric. Experts are not yet agreed on the question whether

its architectural features justify us in referring it to the sixth

century, though all agree that it does not belong to a much later

age.[123] It does not agree with the representation of the Palatium in

the Church of S. Apollinare Dentro, and if it have anything whatever to

do with it, it is probably not the main front, nor even any very

important feature of the spacious palace, which, as we are told by the

local historians,[124] and learn from inscriptions, was surrounded with

porticoes, adorned with the most precious mosaics, divided into several

triclinia, surmounted by a tower which was considered one of the most

magnificent of the king's buildings, and surrounded with pleasant and

fruitful gardens, planted on ground which had been reclaimed from the

morass.[125] But practically almost all the monuments of the

Ostrogothic hero except his tomb and the three churches already

described, have vanished from Ravenna. Would that we could have seen the

great mosaic which once adorned the pediment of his palace. There

Theodoric stood, clad in mail, with spear and shield. On his left was a

female figure representing the City of Rome, also with a spear in her

hand and her head armed with a helmet, while towards his right Ravenna

seemed speeding with one foot on the land and the other on the sea. How

this great mosaic perished is not made clear to us. But there was also

an equestrian statue of Theodoric raised on a pyramid six cubits high.

Horse and rider were both of brass, covered with yellow gold, and the

king here too had his buckler on his left arm, while the right,

extended, pointed a lance at an invisible foe.



This statue was carried off from Ravenna, probably by the Frankish

Emperor Charles, to adorn his capital at Aachen, and it was still to be

seen there when Agnellus wrote his ecclesiastical history of Ravenna,

three hundred years after the death of Theodoric.