Theodoric the Goth: Barbarian Champion of Civilisation - Thomas Hodgkin

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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 He lived, withdrawn from vulgar eyes, in the innermost recesses of the palace, a sort of Holy of Holies behind the first and the second veil.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 Cæsars. 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 Mediæval 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.

      

      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 Ægean, 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

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