oken, of vain animosities and vainer reconciliations, years
in which Theodoric himself seems never to understand his own purpose,
whether it shall be under the shadow of the Empire or upon the ruins of
the Empire, that he will build up his throne. Take the map of what is
now often called "the Balkan peninsula", the region in which these
fourteen years were passed; look at the apparently purpose, less way in
which the mountain ranges of Haemus, Rhodope, and Scardus cross,
intersect, run parallel, approach, avoid one another; look at the
strange entanglement of passes and watersheds and table-lands which
their systems display to us. Even such as the ranges among which he was
manoeuvring--perplexed, purposeless, and sterile--was the early manhood
of Theodoric.

About 474, soon after the great Southward migration, Theudemir died at
Cyrrhus in Macedonia, one of the new settlements of the Ostrogoths. When
he was attacked by his fatal sickness he called his people together and
pointed to Theodoric as the heir of his royal dignity. Kingship at this
time among the Germanic nations was not purely hereditary, the consent
of the people being required even in the most ordinary and natural cases
of succession, such as that of a first-born son, full grown and a tried
soldier succeeding to an aged father. In such cases, however, that
consent was almost invariably given. Theodoric, at any rate, succeeded
without disputes to the doubtful and precarious position of king of the
Ostrogoths.

Almost at the same time a change was being made by death in the wearer
of the Imperial diadem. In order to illustrate the widely different
character of the Roman and the Gothic monarchies it will be well to
cease for a little time to follow the fortunes of Theodoric and to
sketch the history of Leo, the dying Emperor, and of Zeno, who succeeded
him.

Leo I., who reigned at Constantinople from 457 to 474, and who was
therefore Emperor during the whole time that Theodoric dwelt there as
hostage, was not, as far as we can ascertain, a man of any great
abilities in peace or war, or originally of very exalted station. But he
was "curator" or steward in the household of Aspar, the successful
barbarian adventurer who has been already alluded to.[34] As an Arian by
religion, and a barbarian, or the son of a barbarian, by birth, Aspar
could not himself assume the diadem, but he could give it to whom he
would, and Leo the steward was the second of his dependan