he other
Teutonic tribes. Following, consciously or unconsciously, the rule of
Theodoric, the Habsburgers, during the Middle Ages, built up by their
judicious political marriages their tremendous dynastic power
(_Hausmacht_), which finally became superior to that of the Holy Roman
Empire itself.

These marriages gave rise to the proverb: Let others wage wars; thou,
happy Austria, get married, for what realms the God of War gives to
others are given to thee by the sweet Goddess of Love (_Bella gerant
alii, tu, felix Austria, nube; nam quce Mars aliis, dat tibi regna
Venus_). Theodoric married his sister, Amalfreda, to the Vandal king
Thrasimund; his daughter Theodicusa to Alaric; his daughter Ostrogotha
to the Burgundian prince Sigismund; his niece Amalberga to the
Thuringian king Hermanfrid. Political marriages, then, are as old as
German history.

Amalasuntha, one of the daughters of Theodoric, shines preeminently in
history as the worthy daughter of the greatest German king of the
creative epoch. Her contemporaries, the authors Cassiodorus and
Procopius, praise her as an ingenuous, high-minded, lofty woman, an
excellent ruler, and a noble protector of arts and sciences. Early
widowed through the death of Eutharich, also a scion of the race of the
Amali, she becomes, upon the demise of her great father, regent and
guardian of her minor son, Athalarich. Reared in Graeco-Roman culture,
Amalasuntha inclined in her life and thoughts toward the Roman element
in the state, and was to a certain extent estranged from the
semi-barbarous Ostrogoths, who unwillingly submitted to her guardianship
over her son, their king, and even more unwillingly to her rule over
themselves. Though her rule was mild and wise, yet the discontent of the
national party increased. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the head of
the noble queen for keeping young Athalarich removed from the company of
the youth of Gothic race, for surrounding him with aged men, "though the
mildest and wisest of their people," and for sending him to a Latin
school of rhetoricians. For this was the training of a Roman emperor,
not of a Gothic king, and their ancestors had taught them to despise
such education. The queen was forced to yield to the popular demand, and
the consequences of her surrender justified her fears. In the company of
young Gothic nobles, Athalarich soon learned all the evil which the
young barbarians had drawn from the Roman mire. His new friends ha