Goths were
expected to perform military service, and were drilled from their youth
in those military evolutions which had so often given the disciplined
Roman the victory over the undisciplined Goth, till every pomoerium
(boulevard), says Ennodius, might be seen full of boys and lads, learning
to be soldiers. Everything meanwhile was done to soothe the wounded
pride of the conquered. The senate of Rome was still kept up in name (as
by Odoacer), her nobles flattered by sonorous titles, and the officers of
the kingdom and the palace bore the same names as they would have done
under Roman emperors. The whole was an attempt to develop Dietrich's own
Goths by the only civilization which he knew, that of Constantinople: but
to engraft on it an order, a justice, a freedom, a morality, which was
the 'barbarian' element. The treasures of Roman art were placed under
the care of government officers; baths, palaces, churches, aqueducts,
were repaired or founded; to build seems to have been Dietrich's great
delight; and we have left us, on a coin, some image of his own palace at
Verona, a strange building with domes and minarets, something like a
Turkish mosque; standing, seemingly, on the arcades of some older Roman
building. Dietrich the Goth may, indeed, be called the founder of
'Byzantine' architecture throughout the Western world.

Meanwhile, agriculture prospered once more; the Pontine Marshes were
drained; the imperial ports restored, and new cities sprang up. 'The new
ones,' says Machiavelli, 'were Venice, Siena, Ferrara, Aquileia; and
those which became extended were Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Naples,
and Bologna.' Of these the great sea-ports, especially Venice, were
founded not by Goths, but by Roman and Greek fugitives: but it was the
security and liberality of Dietrich's reign which made their existence
possible; and Venice really owes far more to the barbarian hero, than to
the fabled patronage of St. Mark.

'From this devastation and new population,' continues Machiavelli, 'arose
new languages, which, partaking of the native idiom of the new people,
and of the old Roman, formed a new manner of discourse. Besides, not
only were the names of provinces changed, but also of lakes, rivers,
seas, and men; for France, Spain, and Italy are full of fresh names,
wholly different from the ancient.'

This reign of Dietrich was, in fact, the birth-hour of modern Italy; and,
as Machiavelli says, 'brought the country to