remain for the Romans as it had been under the emperors.  He gave presents and rations to the people, yet though he found the treasury ruined he brought it by hard work into a flourishing state.  He attempted nothing against the Catholic Faith.  He exhibited games in the circus and amphitheatre, and received from the Romans the names of Trajan and Valentinian, for the happy days of those most prosperous emperors he did in truth seek to restore, and at the same time the Goths rendered true obedience to their valiant king according to the edict which he had given them.

[Footnote 1:  Anon.  Valesii.  This was probably Bishop Maximian, a Catholic bishop of Ravenna.  I follow, with a few changes, Mr. Hodgkin’s translation.]

[Footnote 2:  Thirty-two years and a half from the death of Odoacer; thirty-seven from his descent into Italy.]

“He gave one of his daughters in marriage to the king of the Visigoths in Gaul, another to the son of the Burgundian king; his sister to the king of the Vandals and his niece to the king of the Thuringians.  Thus he pleased all the nations round him, for he was a lover of manufactures and a great restorer of cities.  He restored the Aqueduct of Ravenna which Trajan had built, and again after a long interval brought water into the city.  He completed but did not dedicate the Palace, and he finished the Porticoes about it.  At Verona he erected Baths and a Palace, and constructed a Portico from the Gate to the Palace.  The Aqueduct, which had been destroyed long since, he renewed, and brought in water through it.  He also surrounded the city with new walls.  At Ticinum (Pavia) too he built a Palace, Baths, and an Amphitheatre and erected walls round the city.  On many other cities he bestowed similar benefits.

“Thus he so delighted the nations near him that they entered into a league with him hoping that he would be their king.  The merchants, too, from many provinces flocked to his dominions, for so great was the order which he maintained, that, if any one wished to keep gold and silver in the country it was as safe as in a walled city.  A proof of this was that he never made gates for any city of Italy, and the gates that already existed were never closed.  Any one who had business to do, might go about it as safely by night as by day.”

But if such praise sound fulsome, let us hear what the sceptical and censorious Procopius has to say: 

“Theodoric,” he tells us, “was an extraordinary lover of justice and adhered vigorously to the laws.  He guarded the country from barbarian invasions, and displayed the greatest intelligence and prudence.  There was in his government scarcely a trace of injustice towards his subjects, nor would he permit any of those under him to attempt anything of the kind except that the Goths divided among themselves the same proportion of the land of Italy as Odoacer had given to his confederates.  Thus then Theodoric was in name a tyrant, in fact a true king, not inferior