[Illustration:  BOETIUS]

The Roman world was now ruled by Theodoric the Ostrogoth.  This leader had succeeded to the headship of the Ostrogoths on the death of his father Theodomir in 474.  For a time he was a pensioner of the Byzantine court, with the duty of defending the lower Danube; but in 488 he determined to invade Italy and become a sovereign subordinate to no one.  By the defeat of Odoacer in 489 he accomplished that end; and desiring to conciliate the Senatorial party at Rome, he called Boetius from his studious retirement, as one who by his position and wealth could reconcile his countrymen to the rule of a barbarian chief.

In 510 Boetius was made consul, and he continued in the public service till after his sons Symmachus and Boetius were elevated to the consulship in 522.  Thus far he had enjoyed the full confidence of Theodoric; but in 523 he was thrown into prison in Pavia and his property confiscated, and the Senate condemned him to death.  Two years later he was executed.  Unfortunately, the only account we have of the causes which led to this downfall is Boetius’s own in the ‘Consolations.’  According to this, he first incurred Theodoric’s displeasure by getting the province of Campania excepted from the operation of an edict requiring the provincials to sell their corn to the government, and otherwise championing the people against oppression; was the victim of various false accusations; and finally was held a traitor for defending Albinus, chief of the Senate, from the accusation of holding treasonable correspondence with the Emperor Justin at Constantinople.  “If Albinus be criminal, I and the whole Senate are equally guilty, Boetius reports himself to have said.  There is no good reason to doubt his truthfulness in any of these matters; but he does not tell the whole truth, except in a sentence he lets slip later.  Theodoric’s act was no outbreak of barbarian suspicion and ferocity.  Boetius and the whole Senate were really guilty of holding an utterly untenable political position, which no sovereign on earth would endure:  they wished to make the Emperor at Constantinople a court of appeal from Theodoric, as though the latter were still a subordinate prince.  This may not have been technical treason, but it was practical insubordination; and under any other barbarian ruler or any one of fifty native ones, Rome would have flowed with blood.  Theodoric contented himself with executing the ringleader, and the following year put to death Boetius’s father-in-law Symmachus in fear of his plotting revenge.  Even so, the executions were a bad political mistake:  they must have enraged and thoroughly alienated the Senatorial party,—­that is, the chief Italian families,—­and made a fusion of the foreign and native elements definitively out of the question.  We need not blame Boetius or the Senate for their very natural aspiration to live under a civilized instead of a barbarian jurisdiction, even though they had their own codes and courts; but the de facto governing power had its rights also.