to the Emperor Justinian to ask if he would give her an asylum in his
dominions if she required it, and then gave orders for the secret
assassination of the three noblemen. The _coup d'etat_ succeeded: she
had no need to flee the country; and the ship bearing the royal
treasure, which amounted to 40,000 pounds weight of gold, which she
had sent to Dyrrhachium to await her possible flight, was ordered to
return home.

[Sidenote: Embassies between Ravenna and Constantinople.]

Athalaric's health was now rapidly failing, owing to his licentious
excesses, and Amalasuentha, fearing that after his death her own life
might be in danger, began again secretly to negotiate with Justinian
for the entire surrender of the kingdom of Italy into his hands, on
receiving an assurance of shelter and maintenance at the Court of
Byzantium. These negotiations were masked by others of a more public
kind, in which Justinian claimed the Sicilian fortress of Lilybaeum,
which had once belonged to the Vandals; insisted on the surrender of
some Huns, deserters from the army of Africa; and demanded redress for
the sack by the Goths of the Moesian city of Gratiana. These claims
Amalasuentha met publicly with a reply as brave and uncompromising as
her most patriotic subjects could desire, but in private, as has been
already said, she was prepared, for an adequate assurance of personal
safety, to barter away all the rights and liberties of her Italian
subjects, Roman as well as Gothic, and to allow her father's
hard-earned kingdom to sink into a mere dependency of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Death of Athalaric, Oct. 2, 534.]

Such was the position of affairs when on the 2nd October 534, little
more than a year after Cassiodorus had donned the purple of the
Praefect, Athalaric died, and by his death the whole attitude of the
parties to the negotiations was changed. The power to rule, and with
it the very power to make terms of any kind with the Emperor, was in
danger of slipping from the hands of Amalasuentha. The principle of
female sovereignty was barely accepted by any Teutonic tribe.
Evidently the Ostrogoths had not accepted it, or Amalasuentha would
have ruled as Queen in her own right instead of as Regent for her son.
In order to strengthen her position, and ensure her acceptance as
Sovereign by the Gothic warriors, she decided to associate with
herself, not in matrimony, for he was already married, but in regal
partnership, her cousin Theod