Storm And Stress

Death of Theudemir, and accession of Theodoric--Leo the Butcher--The

Emperor Zeno--The march of Theodoric against the son of Trianus--His

invasion of Macedonia--Defeat of his rear guard--His compact with the

Emperor.





The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man

is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is

in a ferment, the character undec ded, the way of life uncertain, the

ambition thick-sighted.--(KEATS, Preface to Endymion.)



The sentence thus written by the sensitive young poet, a child of London

of the nineteenth century, was eminently exemplified in the history of

the martial chief of the Ostrogoths. The next fourteen years in the life

of Theodoric, which will be described in this chapter, were years of

much useless endeavour, of marches and countermarches, of alliances

formed and broken, of vain animosities and vainer reconciliations, years

in which Theodoric himself seems never to understand his own purpose,

whether it shall be under the shadow of the Empire or upon the ruins of

the Empire, that he will build up his throne. Take the map of what is

now often called the Balkan peninsula, the region in which these

fourteen years were passed; look at the apparently purpose, less way in

which the mountain ranges of Haemus, Rhodope, and Scardus cross,

intersect, run parallel, approach, avoid one another; look at the

strange entanglement of passes and watersheds and table-lands which

their systems display to us. Even such as the ranges among which he was

manoeuvring--perplexed, purposeless, and sterile--was the early manhood

of Theodoric.



About 474, soon after the great Southward migration, Theudemir died at

Cyrrhus in Macedonia, one of the new settlements of the Ostrogoths. When

he was attacked by his fatal sickness he called his people together and

pointed to Theodoric as the heir of his royal dignity. Kingship at this

time among the Germanic nations was not purely hereditary, the consent

of the people being required even in the most ordinary and natural cases

of succession, such as that of a first-born son, full grown and a tried

soldier succeeding to an aged father. In such cases, however, that

consent was almost invariably given. Theodoric, at any rate, succeeded

without disputes to the doubtful and precarious position of king of the

Ostrogoths.



Almost at the same time a change was being made by death in the wearer

of the Imperial diadem. In order to illustrate the widely different

character of the Roman and the Gothic monarchies it will be well to

cease for a little time to follow the fortunes of Theodoric and to

sketch the history of Leo, the dying Emperor, and of Zeno, who succeeded

him.



Leo I., who reigned at Constantinople from 457 to 474, and who was

therefore Emperor during the whole time that Theodoric dwelt there as

hostage, was not, as far as we can ascertain, a man of any great

abilities in peace or war, or originally of very exalted station. But he

was curator or steward in the household of Aspar, the successful

barbarian adventurer who has been already alluded to.[34] As an Arian by

religion, and a barbarian, or the son of a barbarian, by birth, Aspar

could not himself assume the diadem, but he could give it to whom he

would, and Leo the steward was the second of his dependants whom he had

thus honoured. Once placed upon the throne, however, Leo showed himself

less obsequious to his old master than was expected. The post of Prefect

of the City became vacant; Aspar suggested for the office a man who,

like himself, was tainted with the heresy of Arius. At the moment Leo

promised acquiescence, but immediately repented, and in the dead of

night privately conferred the important office on a Senator who

professed the orthodox faith. Aspar in a rage laid a rough hand on the

Imperial purple, saying to Leo: Emperor! it is not fitting that one who

wears this robe should tell lies. Leo answered with some spirit:

Neither is it fitting that an Emperor should be bound to do the bidding

of any of his subjects, and so injure the State.



After this encounter there were thirteen years of feud between

King-maker and King, between Aspar and Leo. At length in 471 Aspar and

his three valiant sons fell by the swords of the Eunuchs of the Palace.

The foul and cowardly deed was perhaps marked by some circumstances of

especial cruelty, which earned for Leo the title by which he was long

after remembered in Constantinople, The Butcher.[35]



In order to strengthen himself against the adherents of Aspar, Leo

cultivated the friendship of a set of wild, uncouth mountaineers, who at

this time played the same part in Constantinople which the Swiss of the

Middle Ages played in Italy. These were the Isaurians, men from the

rugged highlands of Pisidia, whose lives had hitherto been chiefly spent

either in robbing or in defending themselves from robbery. At their head

was a man named Tarasicodissa,--probably well born, if a chieftain from

the Isaurian highlands could be deemed to be well born by the

contemptuous citizens of Constantinople, no soldier, for we are told

that even the picture of a battle frightened him, but a man whom the

other Isaurians seem to have followed with clannish loyalty, like that

which the Scottish Camerons showed even to the wily and unwarlike Master

of Lovat.



With Tarasicodissa therefore the Emperor Leo entered into a compact of

mutual defence. The Isaurian dropped his uncouth name and assumed the

classical and philosophical-sounding name of Zeno; he received the hand

of Ariadne, daughter of the Emperor, in marriage, and as Leo had no male

offspring, the little Leo, offspring of this marriage and therefore

grandson of the aged Emperor, was, in this monarchy which from elective

was ever becoming more strictly hereditary, generally accepted as his

probable successor.



As it had been planned so it came to pass. Leo the Butcher died (3d Feb.

474); the younger Leo, a child of seven years old, was hailed by Senate

and People as his successor: Zeno came at the head of a brilliant train

of senators, soldiers, and magistrates, to adore the new Emperor, and

the child, carefully instructed by his mother in the part which he had

to play, placed on the bowed head of his father the Imperial diadem.

This act of association as it was called, generally practised upon a

son or nephew by a veteran Emperor anxious to be relieved from some of

the cares of reigning, required to be ratified by the acclamations of

the soldiery; but no doubt these acclamations, which could generally be

purchased by a sufficiently liberal donative, were not wanting on this

occasion. Zeno, otherwise called Tarasicodissa the Isaurian, was now

Emperor, and nine months after, when his child-partner died, he became

sole ruler of the Roman world, except in so far as his dignity might be

considered to be shared by the phantom Emperors of the West, who at this

time were dethroning and being dethroned with fatal rapidity at Rome

and Ravenna.



Thus mean and devious were the paths by which an adventurer could climb

in the fifth century to that which was still looked upon as the pinnacle

of earthly greatness. For however unworthy a man might feel himself to

be, and however unworthy all his subjects might know him to be of the

highest place in the Empire, when once he had obtained it his power was

absolute and the honours rendered to him were little less than divine.

All laws were passed by his sacred providence; all officers, military

and civil, received their authority from him. In the edicts which he put

forth to the world he spoke of himself as My Eternity, My Mildness,

My Magnificence, and of course these expressions, or, if it were

possible, expressions more adulatory than these, were used by his

subjects when they laid their petitions at the footstool of the sacred

throne. He lived, withdrawn from vulgar eyes, in the innermost recesses

of the palace, a sort of Holy of Holies behind the first and the second

veil. A band of pages, in splendid dress, waited upon his bidding;

thirty stately silentiarii, with helmets and brightly burnished

cuirasses, marched backwards and forwards before the second veil, to see

that no importunate petitioner disturbed the silence of the sacred

cubicle. On the comparatively rare occasions when he showed himself to

his subjects, he wore upon his head the diadem, a band of white linen,

in which blazed the most precious jewels of the Empire. Hung round his

shoulders and reaching down to his feet was that precious purple robe,

for the sake of which so many crimes were committed, and which often

proved itself a very garment of Nessus to him who dared to assume it

without force sufficient to render his usurpation legitimate. On the

feet of the Emperor were buskins which, like the diadem, were studded

with precious stones, and like the robe were dyed with the Imperial

purple. Thus gorgeously arrayed he took his place in the podium, the

royal box in the Amphitheatre, and from thence, while gazed upon by his

subjects, gazed himself upon the savage beast-fight, or in the

Hippodrome, with difficulty restraining his eagerness for the success of

the Blue or the Green faction, gave the sign for the chariot races to

begin. Or he sat surrounded by his court in the purple presence-chamber

to consult upon public affairs with his Consistory, a sort of Privy

Council, composed of the great ministers of state. Conspicuous among

these were the fifteen officers of highest rank, Generals, Judges, Grand

Chamberlains, Finance Ministers, who had each the right to be addressed

as Illustrious. When any subject of the Emperor, were it one of these

Illustrious ones himself, were it the son or brother of his predecessor,

were it even a former patron, like Aspar, by whose favour he had been

selected to wear the purple, was admitted to an audience of Augustus

(that great name went as of right with the diadem), the etiquette of the

court required that he should not merely bow nor kneel, but absolutely

prostrate himself before the Sacred Majesty of the Emperor, who, if in a

gracious mood, then with outstretched hand raised him from the earth

and permitted him to kiss his knee or the fringe of his Imperial mantle.



To this dizzy height of greatness--for such, however small Marcian or

Leo or Zeno may now seem to us by the lapse of centuries, it was felt to

be by the contemporary generations--it was possible under the singular

combination of election and inheritance which regulated the succession

to the throne, for almost any citizen of the Empire, if not of barbarian

blood or heretical creed, to aspire. Diocletian, the second founder of

the Empire, was the son of a slave; Justinian--an even greater name--was

the nephew of a Macedonian peasant, who with a sheepskin bag containing

a week's store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his

native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital Zeno, as we have

seen, though perhaps better born than either Diocletian or Justinian,

was only a little Isaurian chieftain. Thus the possibilities open to

aspiring ambition were great in the Empire of the Caesars. As any male

citizen of the United States, born between the St. Lawrence and the Rio

Grande, may one day be installed in the White House as President, so any

Roman and orthodox inhabitant of the Empire, whether noble, citizen,

or peasant, might flatter himself with the hope that he too should one

day wear the purple of Diocletian, be saluted as Augustus, and see

Prefects and Masters of the Soldiery prostrating themselves before His

Eternity. This was, in a sense, the better, the democratic side of the

Roman monarchy. Power which was supposed to be conveyed by the will of

the people (as expressed by the acclamations of the army) might be

wielded by the arm of any member of that people. On the other hand there

was an evil in the habit thus engendered in men's minds, of humbling

themselves before mere power without regard to the manner of its

acquirement. When we compare the polity of Rome or Constantinople, where

a century was a long time for the duration of a dynasty, with the far

simpler polities of the Teutonic tribes which invaded the Empire, almost

all of whom had their royal houses, reaching back into and even beyond

the dawn of national history, supposed to be sprung from the loins of

the gods, and rendered illustrious by countless deeds of valour recorded

in song or saga, we see at once that in these ruder states we are in

presence of a principle which the Empire knew not, but which Mediaeval

Europe knew and glorified, the principle of Loyalty. This principle,

the same that bound Bayard to the Valois, and Montrose to the Stuart,

has been, with all the follies and even crimes which it may have caused,

an element of strength and cohesion in the states which have arisen on

the ruins of the Roman Empire. The self-respecting but loving loyalty,

with which the Englishman of to-day cherishes the name of the descendant

of Cerdic, of Alfred, and of Edward Plantagenet, who wields the sceptre

of his country, is utterly unlike the slavish homage offered by the

adoring courtiers of Byzantium to the pinchbeck divinity of Zeno

Tarasicodissa.



Raised as Zeno had been to the throne by a mere palace intrigue, and

destitute as he was of any of the qualities of a great statesman or

general, it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen

years, was continually disturbed by conspiracies and rebellions. In most

of these rebellions his mother-in-law, Verina, widow of Leo, an

ambitious and turbulent woman, played an important part.



It was only a year after Zeno's accession to sole power by the death of

his son (Nov., 475) when he was surprised by the outbreak of a

conspiracy, hatched by his mother-in-law, the object of which was to

place her brother Basiliscus on the throne. Zeno fled by night, still

wearing the Imperial robes which he had worn, sitting in the Hippodrome,

when the tidings reached him, and crossing the Bosphorus was soon in the

heart of Asia Minor, safe sheltered in his native Isauria.



From thence,(July, 477) after nearly two years of exile, he was by a

strange turn of the wheel of Fortune restored to his throne. Religious

bigotry (for Basiliscus did not belong to the party of strict orthodoxy)

and domestic jealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result.

Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome, returned to

the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded that the linen curtain

should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing rays of the

July sun, gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace

shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations on his elevation

and prayers for his continued triumph.[36]



[Footnote 36: Zeno Imperator Tu Vincas, would be, as we know from

other similar instances, the most frequently uttered acclamation. It is

a curious instance of survival that this was always shouted in Latin,

though Greek was the vernacular tongue of the vast majority of the

inhabitants of Constantinople.]



Meanwhile his fallen rival, less fortunate than Zeno himself in planning

an escape, was crouching in the baptistery of the great Church of Saint

Sophia, whither with his wife and children he had fled for refuge. After

all the emblems of Imperial dignity had been rudely stripped from them,

Basiliscus was induced, by a promise from Zeno, that their heads should

be safe, to come forth with his family from the sacred asylum. The

Emperor kept the word of promise to the ear, since no executioner with

drawn sword entered the chamber of his rival. Basiliscus and they that

were with him were sent away to a remote fortress in Cappadocia. The

gate of the fortress was built up, a band of wild Isaurians guarded the

enclosure, suffering no man to enter or to leave it, and in that bleak

stronghold before long the fallen Emperor and Empress with their

children perished miserably of cold and hunger.



Theodoric, who was at this time settled with his people, not on the

shores of the AEgean, but in the region which we now call the Dobrudscha,

between the mouths of the Danube and the Black Sea, had zealously

espoused the cause of the banished Zeno, and lent an effectual hand in

the counter-revolution which restored him to the throne (478). For his

services in this crisis he was rewarded with the dignities of Patrician

and Master of the Soldiery, high honours for a barbarian of twenty-four;

and probably about this time he was also adopted as filius in arma

by the Emperor. What the precise nature of this adopted

sonship-in-arms may have been we are not able to say. It reminds us of

the barbarian customs which in the course of centuries ripened into the

mediaeval ceremony of knighthood, and the whole transaction certainly

sounds more Ostrogothic than Imperial. Zeno's own son and namesake (the

offspring of a first marriage before his union with Ariadne) was

apparently dead before this time; and possibly therefore the title of

son thus conferred upon Theodoric may have raised in his heart wild

hopes that he too might one day be saluted as Roman Emperor. Any such

hopes were probably doomed to inevitable disappointment. Any other

dignity in the State, the Roman Republic, as it still called itself,

was practically within reach of a powerful barbarian, but the diadem, as

has been already said, could in this age of the world, only be worn by

one of pure Roman, that is, non-barbarian, blood.



At this time, and for the next three years, the position of our

Theodoric, both towards the Emperor and towards his own people, was

sorely embarrassed by the position and the claims of the other, the

squinting Theodoric (son of Triarius), whom we met with seventeen years

ago, and whose receipt of stipendia from the court of Constantinople,

at the very time when their own were withheld, raised the wrath of

Walamir and Theudemir. This Theodoric, it will be remembered, was of

unkingly, perhaps of quite ignoble, birth, had risen to greatness by

clinging to the skirts of Aspar, and had, so far as the Emperor's favour

was concerned, fallen with his fall. Shortly before the death of Leo he

had appeared in arms against the Empire, taking one city and besieging

another, and had forced the Emperor to concede to him high rank in the

army (that of General of the Household Troops,[37]) a subsidy of;

L80,000 a year for himself and his people, and lastly a remarkable

stipulation, that he should be absolute ruler[38] of the Goths, and

that the Emperor should not receive any of them who were minded to

revolt from him. This strange article of the treaty shows us, on the

one hand, how thoroughly fictitious and illegitimate was this

Theodoric's claim to kinship; since assuredly neither Alaric, nor

Ataulfus, nor Theudemir, nor any of the genuine kings of the Goths, ever

needed to bolster up their authority over their subjects by any such

figment of an Imperial concession; and on the other hand, as it

coincides in date with the time of Theudemir's and his Theodoric's

entrance into the Empire, it shows us the distracting influences to

which the large number of Gothic settlers south of the Danube, settled

there before Theudemir's migration, were exposed by that event. There

can be little doubt that the Goths who were minded to revolt from the

son of Triarius and who were not to be received into favour by the

Emperor, were Ostrogoths, still dimly conscious of the old tie which

bound them to the glorious house of Amala, and more than half disposed

to forsake the service of their squinting upstart chief in order to

follow the banners of the young hero, son of Theudemir.



Then came the death of Leo (478), Zeno's accession and the insurrection

of Basiliscus, in which the son of Triarius took part against the

Isaurian Emperor. Soon after this insurrection was ended and Zeno was

restored to his precarious throne, there came an embassy from the

foederati (as they called themselves) that is, from the unattached

Goths who followed the Triarian standard, begging Zeno to be reconciled

to their lord, and hinting that he was a truer friend to the Empire than

the petted and pampered son of Theudemir. After a consultation with the

Senate and People of Rome, in other words, with the nobles of

Constantinople and the troops of the household, Zeno decided that to

take both the Theodorics into his pay would be too heavy a charge on

the treasury; that there was no reason for breaking with the young Amal,

his ally, and therefore that the request of his rival must be refused.

Open war followed, consisting chiefly of devastating raids by the son of

Triarius into the valleys of Moesia and Thrace. A message was sent to

Theodoric the Amal, who was dwelling quietly with his people by the

Danube. Why are you lingering in your home? Come forth and do great

deeds worthy of a Master of Roman Soldiery. But if I take the field

against the son of Triarius, was the answer, I fear that you will make

peace with him behind my back. The Emperor and Senate bound themselves

by solemn oaths that he should never be received back into favour, and

an elaborate plan of campaign was arranged, according to which the Amal

marching with his host from Marcianople, (Shumla) was to be met by one

general with twelve thousand troops, on the southern side of the

Balkans, and by another with thirty thousand in the valley of the Hebrus

(Maritza).



But the Roman Empire, in its feeble and flaccid old age, seemed to have

lost all capacity for making war. Theodoric the Amal performed his share

of the compact; but when with his weary army, encumbered with many women

and children, he emerged from the passes of the Balkans he found no

Imperial generals there to meet him, but, instead, Theodoric the

Squinter with a large army of Goths encamped on an inaccessible hill.

Neither chief gave the signal for combat; perhaps both were restrained

by a reluctance to urge the fratricidal strife; but there were daily

skirmishes between the light-armed horsemen at the foraging grounds and

places for watering. Every day, too, the son of Triarius rode round the

hostile camp, shouting forth reproaches against his rival, calling him

a perjured boy, a madman, a traitor to his race, a fool who could not

see whither the Imperial plans were tending. The Romans would stand by

and look quietly on while Goth wore out Goth in deadly strife. Murmurs

from the Amal's troops showed that these words struck home. Next day the

son of Triarius climbed a hill overlooking the camp, and again raised

his voice in bitter defiance. Scoundrel! why are you leading so many of

my kinsmen to destruction? why have you made so many Gothic wives

widows? What has become of that wealth and plenty which they had when

they first took service with you? Then they had two or three horses

apiece; now without horses and in the guise of slaves, they are

wandering on foot through Thrace. But they are free-born men surely,

aye, as free-born as you are, and they once measured out the gold coins

of Byzantium with a bushel. When the host heard these words, all, both

men and women, went to their leader Theodoric the Amal, and claimed from

him with tumultuous cries that he should come to an accommodation with

the son of Tnarius. The proposal must have been hateful to the Amal. To

throw away the laboriously earned favour of the Emperor, to denude

himself of the splendid dignity of Master of the Soldiery, to leave the

comfortable home-like fabric of Imperial civilisation and go out again

into the barbarian wilderness with this insolent namesake who had just

been denouncing him as a perjured boy: all this was gall and wormwood to

the spirit of Theodoric. But he knew the conditions under which he held

his sovereignty--king, as a recent French monarch expressed it, by

the grace of God and the will of the people, and he did not attempt to

strive against the decision of his tumultuary parliament. He met his

elderly competitor, each standing on the opposite bank of a disparting

stream, and after speech had, they agreed that they would wage no more

war on one another but would make common cause against Byzantium.



The now confederated Theodorics sent an embassy to Zeno, bearing their

common demands for territory, stipendia and rations for their

followers, and, in the case of Theodoric the Amal, charged with bitter

complaints of the desertion which had exposed him to such dangers. The

Emperor replied with an accusation (which appears to have been wholly

unfounded) that Theodoric himself had meditated treachery, and that

this was the reason why the Roman generals had feared to join their

forces to his. Still the Emperor was willing to receive him again into

favour if he would relinquish his alliance with the son of Triarius, and

in order to lure him back the ambassadors were to offer him 1,000

pounds' weight of gold (L40,000), 10,000 of silver (L35,000), a yearly

revenue of 10,000 aurei (L6,000), and the daughter of Olybrius, one of

the noblest-born damsels of Byzantium, for his wife. But the Amal king,

having stooped so low as to make an alliance with the son of Triarius,

was not going to stoop lower by breaking it. The ambassadors returned to

Constantinople with their purpose unaccomplished, and Zeno began

seriously to prepare for the apparently inevitable war with all the

Gothic foederati in his land, commanded by both the Theodorics. He

summoned to the capital all the troops whom he could muster, and

delivered to them a spirited oration, in which he exhorted them to be of

good courage, declaring that he himself would go forth with them to war,

and would share all their hardships and dangers. For nearly a hundred

years, ever since the time of the great Theodosius, no Eastern Emperor

apparently had conducted a campaign in person; and the announcement that

this inactivity was to be ended and that a Roman Imperator was again,

like the Imperators of old time, to march with the legions and to

withstand the shock of battle, roused the soldiers to extraordinary

enthusiasm. The very men who, a little while before, had been bribing

the officers to procure exemption from service, now offered larger sums

of money in order to obtain an opportunity of distinguishing themselves

under the eyes of the Emperor. They pressed forward past the long wall

which at about sixty miles from Constantinople crossed the narrow

peninsula and defended the capital of the Empire; they caught some of

the forerunners of the Gothic host, the Uhlans, if we may call them so,

of Theodoric: everything foreboded an encounter, more serious and

perhaps more triumphant than any that had been seen since the days of

Theodosius. Then, as in a moment, all was changed. Zeno's old spirit of

sloth and cowardice returned. He would not undergo the fatigue of the

long marches through Thrace, he would not look upon the battle-field,

the very pictures of which he found so terrible; it was publicly

announced that the Emperor would not go forth to war. The soldiers,

enraged, began to gather in angry groups, rebuking one another for their

over-patience in submitting to be ruled by such a coward. How? Are we

men, and have we swords in our hands, and shall we any longer bear with

such disgraceful effeminacy, by which the might of this great Empire is

sapped, so that every barbarian who chooses may carve out a slice from

it?



These clamours were rapidly growing seditious, and in a few days an

anti-Emperor would probably have been proclaimed; but Zeno, more afraid

of his soldiers than even of the Goths, adroitly moved them into their

widely-scattered winter-quarters, leaving the invaded provinces to take

care of themselves for a little time, while he tried by his own natural

weapons of bribery and intrigue to detach the other and older

Theodoric from the new confederacy.



On this path he met with unmerited success. The son of Triarius, who had

lately been uttering such noble sentiments about Gothic kinship, and the

folly of Gothic warriors playing into the hands of their hereditary

enemies, the crafty courtiers of Constantinople, soon came to terms with

the Emperor, and on receiving the command of two brigades of household

troops,(Scholse) his restoration to all the dignities which he had held

under Basiliscus, the military office which his rival had forfeited, and

rations and allowances for 13,000 of his followers, broke his alliance

with Theodoric the Amal, and entered the service of the Emperor of New

Rome.



Theodoric the Amal, who was now in his own despite (479) an outlaw from

the Roman State, burst in fierce wrath into Macedonia, into the region

where he and his people had been first quartered five years before.

Again he marched down the valley of the Vardar, he took Stobi, putting

its garrison to the sword, and threatened the great city of

Thessalonica. The citizens, fearing that Zeno would abandon them to the

barbarians, broke out into open sedition, threw down the statues of the

Emperor, took the keys of the city from the Prefect and entrusted them

to the safer keeping of their Bishop. Zeno sent ambassadors reproaching

the Amal for his ungrateful requital of the unexampled favours and

dignities which had been conferred upon him, and inviting him to return

to his old fidelity. Theodoric showed himself not unwilling to treat,

sent ambassadors to Constantinople, and ordered his troops to refrain

from murder and conflagration, and to take only the absolute necessaries

of life from the provincials. He then quitted the precincts of

Thessalonica and moved westwards to the city of Heraclea (Monastir),

which lies at the foot of the great mountain range that separates

Macedonia from Epirus. While talking of peace he was already meditating

a new and brilliant stroke of strategy, but he was for some time

hindered from accomplishing it by the illness of his sister, who,

perhaps fatigued by the hardships of the march, had fallen sick in the

camp before Heraclea. This time of enforced delay was occupied by

negotiations with the Emperor. But the Emperor had really nothing to

offer worth the Ostrogoth's acceptance. A settlement on the Pantalian

plain, a bleak upland among the Balkans, about forty miles south of

Sardica (Sofia), and a payment of two hundred pounds' weight of gold

(L8,000) as subsistence-money for the people till they should have had

time to till the land and reap their first harvest, this was all that

Zeno offered to the chief, who already in imagination saw the rich

cities of the Adriatic lying defenceless at his feet. For during this

time of inaction the Amal had opened communications with a Gothic

landowner, named Sigismund, who dwelt near Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), and

was a man of influence in the province of Epirus; and Sigismund, though

nominally a loyal subject of the Emperor, was doing his best to sow

fear and discouragement in the hearts of the citizens of Dyrrhachium

and to prepare the way for the advent of his countrymen.



At length the Gothic princess died, and her brother, the Amal, having

vainly sought to put Heraclea to ransom (the citizens had retired to a

strong fortress which commanded it), burned the deserted city, a deed

more worthy of a barbarian than of one bred up in the Roman

Commonwealth. Then with all his nation-army he started off upon the

great Egnatian Way, which, threading the rough passes of Mount Scardus,

leads from Macedonia to Epirus, from the shores of the AEgean to the

shores of the Adriatic. His light horsemen went first to reconnoitre the

path; then followed Theodoric himself with the first division of his

army. Soas, his second in command, ordered the movements of the middle

host; last of all came the rear-guard, commanded by Theodoric's brother,

Theudimund, and protecting the march of the women, the cattle, and the

waggons. It was a striking proof both of their leader's audacity and of

his knowledge of the decay of martial spirit among the various garrisons

that lined the Egnatian Way, that he should have ventured with such a

train into such a perilous country, where at every turn were narrow

defiles which a few brave men might have held against an army.



The Amal and his host passed safely through the defiles of Scardus and

reached the fortress of Lychnidus overlooking a lake now known as Lake

Ochrida. Here Theodoric met with his first repulse. The fortress was

immensely strong by nature, was well stored with corn, and had

springing fountains of its own, and the garrison were therefore not to

be frightened into surrender. Accordingly, leaving the fortress untaken,

Theodoric with his two first divisions pushed rapidly across the second

and lower range, the Candavian Mountains, leaving Theudimund with the

waggons and the women to follow more slowly. In this arrangement there

was probably an error of judgment which Theodoric had occasion bitterly

to regret. For the moment, however, he was completely successful.

Descending into the plain he took the towns of Scampae (Elbassan) and

Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), both of which, probably owing to the

discouraging counsels of Sigismund, seem to have been abandoned by their

inhabitants.



Great was the consternation at Edessa (a town about thirty miles west of

Thessalonica and the headquarters of the Imperial troops) when the news

of this unexpected march of Theodoric across the mountains was brought

into the camp. Not only the general-in-chief, Sabinianus, was quartered

there, but also a certain Adamantius, an official of the highest rank,

who had been charged by Zeno with the conduct of the negotiations with

Theodoric, and whose whole soul seems to have been set on the success of

his mission. He contrived to communicate with Theodoric, and advanced

with Sabinianus through the mountains as far as Lychnidus in order to

conduct the discussion at closer quarters. Propositions passed backwards

and forwards as to the terms upon which a meeting could be arranged.

Theodoric sent a Gothic priest; Adamantius in reply offered to come in

person to Dyrrhachium if Soas and another Gothic noble were sent as

hostages for his safe return. Theodoric was willing to send the hostages

if Sabinianus would swear that they should return in safety. This,

however, for some reason or other, the general surlily and stubbornly

refused to do, and Adamantius saw the earnestly desired interview fading

away into impossibility. At length, with courageous self-devotion, he

succeeded in finding a by-path across the mountains, which brought him

to a fort, situated on a hill and strengthened by a deep ditch, in sight

of Dyrrhachium. From thence he sent messengers to Theodoric earnestly

soliciting a conference; and the Amal, leaving his army in the plain,

rode with a few horsemen to the banks of the stream which separated him

from Adamantius' stronghold. Adamantius, too, to guard against a

surprise, placed his little band of soldiers in a circle round the hill,

and then descended to the stream, and with none to listen to their

speech, commenced the long-desired colloquy. How Adamantius may have

opened his case we are not informed, but the Ostrogoth's reply is worth

quoting word for word: It was my choice to live altogether out of

Thrace, far away towards Scythia, where I should disturb no one by my

presence, and yet should be ready to go forth thence to do the Emperor's

bidding. But you having called me forth, as if for war against the son

of Tnarius, first of all promised that the General of Thrace should

immediately join me with his forces (he never appeared); and then that

Claudius, the Steward of the Goth-money,[39] should meet me with the

pay of the mercenaries (him I never saw); and thirdly, you gave me

guides for my journey, but what sort of guides? Men who, leaving

untrodden all the easier roads into the enemy's country, led me by a

steep path and along the sharp edges of cliffs, where, had the enemy

attacked us, travelling as we were bound to do with horsemen and waggons

and all the lumber of our camp, it had been a marvel if I and all my

folk had not been utterly destroyed. Hence I was forced to make such

terms as I could with the foes, and in fact I owe them many thanks that,

when you had betrayed and they might have consumed me, they nevertheless

spared my life.



Adamantius went over the old story about the great benefits which the

Emperor had bestowed on Theodoric, the Patriciate, the Mastership, the

rich presents, and all the other evidences of his fatherly regard. He

attempted to answer the charges brought by Theodoric, but in this even

the Greek historian[40] who records the dialogue thinks that he failed.

With more show of reason he complained of the march across the mountains

and the dash into Epirus, while negotiations were proceeding with

Constantinople. He recommended him to make peace with the Empire while

it was in his power, and assuring him that he would never be allowed to

lord it over the great cities of Epirus nor to banish their citizens

from thence to make room for his people, again pressed him to accept the

Emperor's offer of Dardania (the Pantalian plain), where there was

abundance of land, beside that which was already inhabited, a fair and

fertile territory lacking cultivators, which his people could till, so

providing themselves in abundance with all the necessaries of life.





Theodoric refused with an oath to take his toil-worn people who had

served him so faithfully, at that time of year (it was now perhaps

autumn) into Dardania. No! they must all remain in Epirus for the

winter; then if they could agree upon the rest of the terms he might be

willing in spring to follow a guide sent by the Emperor to lead them to

their new abode. But more than this, he was ready to deposit his baggage

and all his unwarlike folk in any city which the Emperor might appoint,

to give his mother and his sister as hostages for his entire fidelity,

and then to advance at once with ten thousand of his bravest warriors

into Thrace, as the Emperor's ally. With these men and the Imperial

armies now stationed in the Illyrian provinces, he would undertake to

sweep Thrace clear of all the Goths who followed the son of Triarius.

Only he stipulated that in that case he should be clothed with his old

dignity of Master of the Soldiery, which had been taken from him and

bestowed on his rival, and that he should be received into the

Commonwealth and allowed to live--as he evidently yearned to live--as a

Roman citizen.



Adamantius replied that he was not empowered to treat on such terms

while Theodoric remained in Epirus, but he would refer his proposal to

the Emperor, and with this understanding they parted one from the

other.



Meanwhile, important, and for the Goths disastrous, events had been

taking place in the Candavian mountains. Over these the rear-guard of

Theodoric's army, with the waggons and the baggage, had been slowly

making its way, in a security which was no doubt chiefly caused by the

facility of the previous marches, but to which the knowledge of the

negotiations going forward between King and Emperor may partly have

contributed. In any case, security was certainly insecure with such a

fort as Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had

been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked

thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a

formidable ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry round by

unfrequented paths over the mountains, and ordered them to take up a

commanding but concealed position, and to rush forth from thence at a

given signal. He himself started with his cavalry from Lychnidus at

nightfall, and rode rapidly along the Egnatian Way. At dawn the pursuing

horsemen attacked the Goths, who were just descending the last mountain

slopes into the plain. Theudimund, with his mother, was riding near the

head of the long line of march. Too anxious perhaps for her safety, and

fearing to meet the reproachful looks of Theodoric if aught of harm

happened to her, he hurried her across the last bridge, spanning a deep

defile, which intervened between the mountains and the plain, and then

broke down the bridge behind him to prevent pursuit. Pursuit was indeed

rendered impossible, and the mother of Theodoric was saved, but at what

a cost! The Goths turned back to fight, with the courage of despair, the

pursuing cavalry. At that moment the infantry in ambush, having received

the signal, began to attack them from the rocks above. The position was

a terrible one, and many brave men fell in the hopeless battle. Quarter,

however, was given by the Imperial soldiers, for we are told that more

than five thousand of the Goths were taken prisoners. The booty was

large; and all the waggons of the barbarians, two thousand in number,

were of course captured, but the soldiers, misliking the toil of

dragging them back over all those jagged passes to Lychnidus, burned

them there as they stood upon the Candavian mountains.



I have copied with some minuteness the account given us by the Greek

historian of this mountain march of Theodoric, because it brings before

us with more than usual vividness the conditions under which the

campaigns of the barbarians were conducted. It will have been noticed

that the Gothic army is not only an army but a nation, and that the

campaign is also a migration. The mother and the sister of Theodoric are

accompanying him. There is evidently a long train of non-combatants, old

men, women, and children, following the army in those two thousand

Gothic waggons. The character attributed by Horace to the



Campestres Scythae,

Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos



still survives.



The waggon holds the Scythian's wandering home.



The Goth, a terrible enemy to those outside the pale of his kinship, is

a home-lover at heart, and even in war will not separate himself from

his wife and children. This makes his impact slow, his campaigns

unscientific. It prepares for him frequent defeats, such as that of the

Candavian mountains, which a celibate army would have avoided. But it

makes his conquests, when he does conquer, more enduring, while it

explains those perpetual demands for land, for a settlement within the

Empire, almost on any terms, with which, as was before shown, the

barbarian inroads so often close. We need not follow the tedious story

of the negotiations with Adamantius, which were interrupted by this

sudden success of the Imperial arms. In fact at this point our best

authority,[41] who has been unusually full and graphic for the events of

478 and 479, suddenly fails us, and we have scarcely anything but dry

and scanty annalistic notices for the next nine years of the life of

Theodoric. He seems not to have maintained his footing in Epirus, but to

have returned to the neighbourhood of the Danube, where he fought and

conquered the king of the Bulgarians, a fresh horde of barbarians who at

this time made their first appearance in the Balkan peninsula Whether

the much desired reconciliation with the Empire took place we know not.

It seems probable that this may have been the case, as in the year 481

we find his rival, the other Theodoric, in opposition, and planning an

invasion of Greece. But the career of the son of Triarius was about to

come to an untimely close. Marching westwards, he had reached a station

on the Egnatian Way, near the frontiers of Thrace and Macedonia, called

The Stables of Diomed, and there pitched his camp. One morning he

would fain mount his horse for a gallop across the plain, but before he

was securely seated in the saddle the horse reared. The rider, afraid to

grasp the bridle firmly lest he should pull the creature over upon him,

clung tightly to his seat, but could not guide the horse, which, in its

dancing and prancing, came sidling past the door of the tent. There was

hanging, in barbarian fashion, a spear fastened by a thong. The horse

shied up against the spear, whose point gored his master's side. He was

not killed on the spot, but died soon after of the wound. After some

domestic dissensions and bloodshed, the leadership of his band passed to

his son Recitach, apparently a hot-tempered and tyrannical youth.





Three years after his father's death (484), Recitach, now an enemy of

the Empire, was put to death by Theodoric the Amal, acting under the

orders of Zeno. The band of Triarian Goths, thirty thousand fighting men

in number, was joined to the army of Theodoric, an important addition to

his power, but also to his cares, to the ever-present difficulty of

finding food for his followers.



(481-487) Backwards and forwards between peace and war with the Empire,

Theodoric wavered during the six years which followed his rival's death.

The settlement of his people at this time seems to have been on the

southern shore of the Danube, in part of the countries now known as

Servia and Wallachia, with Novae (Sistova) for his headquarters. One

year (482) he is making a raid into Macedonia and Thessaly and

plundering Larissa. The next (483) he is again clothed with his old

dignity of Master of the Soldiery and keeps his Goths rigidly within

their allotted limits. The next (484) he is actually raised to the

Consulate, an office which, though devoid of power, is still so radiant

with the glory of the illustrious men who have held it for near a

thousand years, from the days of Brutus and Collatinus, that Emperors

covet the possession of it and the mightiest barbarian chiefs in their

service long for no higher reward.



Two years after this (486) he is again in rebellion, ravaging Thrace;

the next year (487) he has broken through the Long Walls and penetrates

within fourteen miles of Constantinople. In all this wearisome period of

Theodoric's life his action seems to be merely destructive; there is

nothing constructive, no fruitful or fertilising thought to be found in

it. Had this been a fair sample of his life, there could be no reason

why he should not sink into the oblivion which covers so many forgotten

freebooters. But in 488 a change came over the spirit of his dream. A

plan was agreed upon between him and the Emperor (by which of them it

was first suggested we cannot now say) for the employment of all this

wasted and destructive force in another field, where its energies might

accomplish some result beneficent and enduring.



That new field was Italy, and in order to understand the conditions of

the problem which there awaited Theodoric, we must briefly recount the

chief events which had happened in that peninsula since Attila departed

from untaken Rome in compliance with the petition of Pope Leo.