d
almost roused the youth to open rebellion against the "woman's rule,"
when, fortunately, he succumbed to the unaccustomed life to which his
delicate constitution was not equal. By his opportune death, history is
spared the record of the horrible tragedy of matricide which, in all
probability, would have been enacted by the misguided prince a tragedy
occurring frequently in the history of the Merovingian dynasty.

Amalasuntha's fate is full of tragic pathos. A great ruler and an
extraordinary woman, she had indeed the qualities to become the
benefactress of her nation, had not the epoch of unrest and agitation,
the unsteadiness and the irreconcilable conflict between an overripe
Roman civilization and Germanic barbarism, made her a victim of untoward
circumstances.

In order to strengthen her tottering throne, she elevated to the
position of her husband and king the last prince of the race of the
Amali, the unworthy Theodat, a man of whom Procopius says that "the
principle of never tolerating a neighbor beside himself had raised him
to power and riches." Immediately upon his ascending the throne, he
openly sided with the so-called nationalist party against Amalasuntha,
and murdered the last friends and partisans of the hapless queen. In her
despair she appealed to the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, emperor,
Justinian, and implored him for protection and hospitable reception. But
she did not escape to Constantinople. Theodat seized her and sent her as
a prisoner to a fortress on a small island in the Bolsen lake. Shortly
after the arrival of the Byzantine ambassador, who brought her a
courteous invitation to the court of Constantinople, she disappeared in
a mysterious way, whether by Theodat's orders or through the intrigues
of the Byzantine is not known; but the king hated her; and the
ambassador, according to Procopius's narrative in his _Historia arcana_,
had been bribed by Empress Theodora, the infamous wife of Justinian, to
prevent by any means the appearance at the corrupt Byzantine court of
the highly cultured, royal Gothic lady.

The history of the Langobards, a Germanic race which plays a great role
in the Migration period in shaping the fate of Italy, and, by driving
the Popes into the arms of the Franks, in elevating that race and the
Carlovingian dynasty, furnishes us a kaleidoscopic sequence of royal
women, who exhibit all the vices and passions, crimes and virtues.

Paul Warnefried, a Langobard noble, ca