able of
definition, but perhaps an historical parallel, though not strictly
accurate, may somewhat aid our comprehension of the subject. It is
well-known how for the first hundred years of the English _Raj_ in
India the power which actually resided in an association of traders,
the old East India Company, and which was wielded under their orders by
a Clive, a Hastings, or a Wellesley, was theoretically vested in an
Emperor, the descendant of "the Great Mogul", who lived in seclusion in
his palace at Delhi, and who, though nominally all-powerful, had really,
as Macaulay has said, "less power to help or to hurt than the youngest
civil servant of the Company". Now assuredly Anastasius and Justin, the
Imperial contemporaries of Theodoric, were no mere phantoms of royalty,
like the last Mogul Emperors of Delhi, but as far as actual efficacious
share in the government of Italy went, the parallel holds good. Such
deference as was paid to their name and authority was a mere courteous
form; the whole power of the State--subject, as has been said, to the
limitations still imposed by the popular institutions of the Goths--was
gathered up in the hands of Theodoric.

What then, it may be said, was gained by keeping up the fiction that
Italy still formed part of the Roman Empire, and that Theodoric ruled in
any sense as the delegate of the Emperor? For the present, much (though
at the cost of future entanglements and complications), since it
facilitated that union of "Romania" and "Barbaricum", which was the next
piece of work obviously necessary for Europe. If the reader will recur
to that noble sentence of Ataulfus, which was quoted in the introduction
to this book,[66] he will see that the reasoning of that great chieftain
took this shape: "A Commonwealth must have laws. The Goths, accustomed
for generations to their tameless freedom, have not acquired the habit
of obedience to the laws. Till they acquire that habit, the
administration of the State must be left in Roman hands, and all the
authority of the King must be used in defence of Roman organisation".

[Footnote 66: See p. 4.]

These principles, though he may never have read the passage of Orosius
which expounded them, were essentially the principles of Theodoric. So
long as he remained in antagonism to the Empire, he could not reckon on
the hearty co-operation of Roman officials in the task of government.
The brave, through patriotism, and the cowardly, through fear of co