d to make an income of not less than L600 a year,
equivalent to two or three times that amount in our day.

All this great hierarchy of officials wielded powers derived, mediately
or immediately, from the Emperor (or in the Ostrogothic monarchy from
the King), and great as was their brilliancy in the eyes of the dazzled
multitudes who crouched before them, it was all reflected from him, who
was the central sun of their universe. But there were still two
institutions which were in theory independent of Emperor or King, which
were yet held venerable by men, and which had come down from the days of
the great world-conquering republic, or the yet earlier days of Romulus
and Numa. These two institutions were the Consulship and the Senate.

The _Consuls,_ as was said in an earlier chapter, still appeared to
preside over the Roman Republic, as they had in truth presided, wielding
between them the full power of a king, when Brutus and Collatinus, a
thousand years before Theodoric's commencement of the siege of Ravenna,
took their seat upon the curule chairs, and donned the _trabea_ of the
Consul. Still, though utterly shorn of its power, the glamour of the
venerable office remained. The Emperor himself seemed to add to his
dignity when he allowed himself to be nominated as Consul, and in
nothing was the cupidity of the tyrant Emperors and the moderation of
the patriot Emperors better displayed than in the number of Consulships
which they claimed or forbore from claiming. Ever since the virtual
division of the Empire into an Eastern and Western portion, it had been
usual, though not absolutely obligatory, for one Consul to be chosen out
of each half of the _Orbis Romanus,_ and in reading the contemporary
chronicles we can almost invariably tell to which portion the author
belongs by observing to which Consul's name he gives the priority. As
has been already stated, after the resumption of friendly relations
between Ravenna and Constantinople, Theodoric, while naming the Western
Consul, sent a courteous notification of the fact to the Emperor, by
whom his nomination seems to have been always accepted without question.
The great Ostrogoth, having once worn the Consular robes and distributed
largess to "the Roman People" in the streets of Constantinople, does not
seem to have cared a second time to assume that ancient dignity, but in
the year 519, towards the end of his reign, he named his son-in-law,
Eutharic, Consul, and the sple