as far as we can ascertain it, seems to have been something like this.
Theodoric, "King of the Goths and Romans in Italy", was absolute ruler
of the country _de facto_, except in so far as the Gothic nation,
assembled under arms at its periodical parades, may have exercised some
check on his full autocracy. He made peace and war, he nominated the
high officers of state, even one of the two Consuls, who still kept
alive the fiction of the Roman Republic; he probably regulated the
admissions to the Senate; he was even in the last resort arbiter of the
fortunes of the Roman Church.

On the other hand, he did not himself coin gold or silver money with his
effigy; but in this he was not singular, for it was not till a
generation or two had elapsed that any of the new barbarian royalties
thought it worth while to claim this attribute of sovereignty. Though
dressed in the purple of royalty, by assuming the title of King only, he
accepted a position somewhat lower than that of the Emperor of the New
Rome. He sent the names of the Consuls whom he had appointed to
Constantinople, an act which might be represented as a mere piece of
formal courtesy, or as a request for their ratification, according to
the point of view of the narrator. With a similar show of courtesy, or
submission, the accession of Theodoric's descendants to the throne was,
when the occasion arose, notified to the then reigning Emperor. And
there were many limitations which the good sense and statesmanlike
feeling of the Ostrogothic king imposed on his exercise of the royal
power, but which might be, perhaps were, represented as part of the
fundamental compact between him and the Emperor of Rome. Such were the
employment of men of Roman birth by preference, in all the great offices
of the state; absolute impartiality between the rival creeds, Catholic
and Arian (to the latter of which Theodoric himself was an adherent);
and a determination to abstain as much as possible from all fresh
legislation which might modify the rights and duties of the Roman
inhabitants of Italy, the legislative power being chiefly exercised in
order to provide for those new cases which arose out of the settlement
of so large a number of new-comers of alien blood within the borders of
the land.

After all the attempts which have been made to explain and to
systematise the relation between the new barbarian royalties and the old
and tottering Empire, much remains which is absolutely incap