sed into a state of barbarism,
the eternal snow and the eternal silence would soon reassert their
supremacy over the frail handiwork of man. Quite different from this is
the aspect of the mountains on the north-eastern border of Italy. The
countries which we now call Venetia and Istria are parted from their
northern neighbours by ranges (chiefly that known as the Julian Alps)
which are indeed of bold and striking outline, but which are not what we
generally understand by "Alpine" in their character, and which often do
not rise to a greater elevation than four thousand feet. Therefore it
was from this quarter of the horizon, from the Pannonian (or in modern
language, Austrian) countries bordering on the Middle Danube, that all
the greatest invaders in the fifth and sixth centuries, Alaric, Attila,
Alboin, bore down upon Italy. And for this reason it was truly said by
an orator[106] who was recounting the praises of Theodoric in connection
with this war: "The city of the Sirmians was of old the frontier of
Italy, upon which Emperors and Senators kept watch, lest from thence the
stored up fury of the neighbouring nations should pour over the Roman
Commonwealth".

[Footnote 106: Ennodius.]

This city of Sirmium, however, and the surrounding territory had now
been for many years divorced from Italy. In Theodoric's boyhood it is
possible that his own barbarian countrymen, occupying as they did the
province of Pannonia, lorded it in the streets of Sirmium, which was
properly a Pannonian city. Since the Ostrogoths evacuated the province
(473), the Gepidae, as we have seen, had entered it, and it was a king of
the Gepidae, Traustila, who sought to bar Theodoric's march into Italy,
and who sustained at the hands of the Ostrogothic king the crushing
defeat by the Hiulca Palus (488). Traustila's son, Trasaric, had asked
for Theodoric's help against a rival claimant to the throne, and had,
perhaps, promised to hand over possession of Sirmium in return for that
assistance. Theodoric, who, as king of "the Hesperian realm", felt that
it was a point of honour to recover possession of "the frontier city of
Italy", gave the desired help, but failed to receive the promised
recompense. When Trasaric's breach of faith was manifest, Theodoric sent
an army (504) composed of the flower of the Gothic youth, commanded by a
general named Pitzias, into the valley of the Save. The Gepidaae, though
reinforced by some of the Bulgarians (who about thi