n's _Italy and Her Invaders._]

[Footnote 2: Bradley's _Story of the Goths._]

[Footnote 3: Bradley's Story of the Goths.]

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THEODORIC THE GOTH.

INTRODUCTION.

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Theodoric the Ostrogoth is one of those men who did great deeds and
filled a large space in the eyes of their contemporaries, but who, not
through their own fault, but from the fact that the stage of the world
was not yet ready for their appearance, have failed to occupy the very
first rank among the founders of empires and the moulders of the
fortunes of the human race.

He was born into the world at the time when the Roman Empire in the West
was staggering blindly to ruin, under the crushing blows inflicted upon
it by two generations of barbarian conquerors. That Empire had been for
more than six centuries indisputably the strongest power in Europe, and
had gathered into its bosom all that was best in the civilisation of the
nations that were settled round the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had given
her laws to all these peoples, had, at any rate in the West, made their
roads, fostered the growth of their cities, taught them her language,
administered justice, kept back the barbarians of the frontier, and for
great spaces of time preserved "the Roman peace" throughout their
habitations. Doubtless there was another side to this picture: heavy
taxation, corrupt judges, national aspirations repressed, free peasants
sinking down into hopeless bondage. Still it cannot be denied that
during a considerable part of its existence the Roman Empire brought, at
least to the western half of Europe, material prosperity and enjoyment
of life which it had not known before, and which it often looked back to
with vain regrets when the great Empire had fallen into ruins. But now,
in the middle of the fifth century, when Theodoric was born amid the
rude splendour of an Ostrogothic palace, the unquestioned ascendancy of
Rome over the nations of Europe was a thing of the past. There were
still two men, one at the Old Rome by the Tiber, and the other at the
New Rome by the Bosphorus, who called themselves August, Pious, and
Happy, who wore the diadem and the purple shoes of Diocletian, and
professed to be joint lords of the universe. Before the Eastern Augustus
and his successors there did in truth lie a long future of dominion, and
once or twice they were to recover