noble
and as statesmanlike as those of the great Emperor Charles, and that if
they had been crowned with the success which they deserved, three
centuries of needless barbarism and misery would have been spared to
Europe.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I.

THEODORIC'S ANCESTORS.

Ostrogoths and Visigoths--Nations forming the Gothic Confederacy--Royal
family of the Amals--Gothic invasion in the Second Century--Hermanric
the Ostrogoth--Inroad of the Huns--Defeat of the Ostrogoths--Defeat of
the Visigoths--The Visigoths within the Empire--Battle of
Adrianople--Alaric in Rome.

[Illustration]

Towards the end of the second century of the Christian Era a great
confederacy of Teutonic nations occupied those vast plains in the south
of Russia which are now, and have been for more than a thousand years,
the homes of Sclavonic peoples. These nations were the Ostrogoths, the
Visigoths, and the Gepidae. Approximately we may say that the Ostrogoths
(or East Goths) dwelt from the Don to the Dnieper, the Visigoths (or
West Goths) from the Dnieper to the Pruth, and the Gepidae to the north
of both, in the district which has since been known as Little Russia.
These three nations were, as has been said, Teutons, and they belonged
to that division of the Teutonic race which is called Low-German, man;
that is to say, that they were more nearly allied to the Frisians, the
Dutch, and to our own Saxon forefathers than they were to the ancestors
of the modern Swabian, Bavarian, and Austrian. They worshipped Odin and
Thunnor; they wrote the scanty records of their race in Runic
characters; they were probably chiefly a pastoral folk, but may have
begun to practise agriculture in the rich cornlands of the Ukraine. They
were essentially a monarchic people, following their kings, whom they
believed to be sprung from the seed of gods, loyally to the field, and
shedding their blood with readiness at their command; but their monarchy
was of the early Teutonic type, always more or less limited by the
deliberations of the great armed assembly of the nation, which (in some
tribes at least) was called the Folc-mote or the Folc-thing; and there
were no strict rules of hereditary succession, the crown being elective
but limited in practice to the members of one ruling and
heaven-descended family.

This family, sprung from the seed of gods, but ruling by the popular
will over