the lad Theodoric began to perceive, as the man Ataulfus
had perceived before him, that the city life upon which all the proverbs
and the songs of his countrymen poured contempt, had its advantages. To
the New Rome came the incessant ships of Alexandria, bringing corn for
the sustenance of her citizens. Long caravans journeyed over the
highlands of Asia Minor loaded with the spices and jewels of India and
the silks of China. Men of every conceivable Asiatic country were drawn
by the irresistible attraction of hoped-for profit to the quays and the
Fora of Byzantium. The scattered homesteads of the Ostrogothic farmers
had no such wonderful power of drawing men over thousands of miles of
land and sea to visit them. Then the bright and varied life of the
Imperial City could not fail to fill the boy's soul with pleasure and
admiration. The thrill of excitement in the Hippodrome as the two
charioteers, Green and Blue, rounded the _spina_, neck and neck, the
tragedies acted in the theatre amid rapturous applause, the strange
beasts from every part of the Roman world that roared and fought in the
Amphitheatre, the delicious idleness of the Baths, the chatter and
bargaining and banter of the Forum,--all this made a day in beautiful
Constantinople very unlike a day in the solemn and somewhat rude palace
by Lake Balaton.

As the boy grew to manhood, the deep underlying cause of this difference
perhaps became clearer to his mind. He could see more or less plainly
that the soul which held all this marvellous body of civilisation
together was reverence for Law. He visited perhaps some of the courts of
law; he may have seen the Illustrious Praetorian Prefect, clothed in
Imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid the
obsequious salutations of the dignified officials,[25] who in their
various ranks and orders surrounded the hall. The costly golden
reed-case, the massive silver inkstand, the silver bowl for the
petitions of suitors, all emblems of his office, were placed solemnly
before him, and the pleadings began. Practised advocates arose to plead
the cause of plaintiff or defendant; busy short-hand writers took notes
of the proceedings; at length in calm and measured words the Prefect
gave his judgment; a judgment which was necessarily based on law, which
had to take account of the sayings of jurisconsults, of the stored-up
wisdom of twenty generations of men; a judgment which, notwithstanding
the venality which wa