s the curse of the Empire, was in most instances in
accordance with truth and justice. How different, must Theodoric often
have thought, in after years, when he had returned to Gothland,--how
different was this settled and orderly procedure from the usage of the
barbarians. With them the "blood-feud", the "wild justice of revenge",
often prolonged from generation to generation, had been long the chief
righter of wrongs done; and if this was now slowly giving place to
judicial trial, that trial was probably a coarse and almost lawless
proceeding, in which the head man of the district, with a hundred
assessors, as ignorant as himself, amid the wild cries of the opposed
parties, roughly fixed the amount of blood-money to be paid by a
murderer, or decided at hap-hazard, often with an obvious reference to
the superior force at the command of one or other of the litigants, some
obscure dispute as to the ownership of a slave or the right to succeed
to a dead man's inheritance.

[Footnote 25: Officium, or Militia Literata.]

Law carefully thought out, systematised, and in the main softened and
liberalised, from generation to generation, was the great gift of the
Roman Empire to the world, and by her strong, and uniform, and, in the
main, just administration of this law, that Empire had kept, and in the
days of Theodoric was still keeping, her hold upon a hundred jarring
nationalities. What hope was there that the German intruders into the
lands of the Mediterranean could ever vie with this great achievement?
Yet if they could not, if it was out of their power to reform and
reinvigorate the shattered state, if they could only destroy and not
rebuild, they would exert no abiding influence on the destinies of
Europe.

I do not say that all these thoughts passed at this time through the
mind of Theodoric, but I have no doubt that the germs of them were sown
by his residence in Constantinople. When he returned, a young man of
eighteen years and of noble presence to the palace of his father, he had
certainly some conception of what the Greeks meant when he heard them
talking about _politeia_, some foreshadowing of what he himself would
mean when in after days he should speak alike to his Goth and Roman
subjects of the blessings of _civilitas_.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.

THE SOUTHWARD MIGRATION.

Struggles with the Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri, and Huns--Death of
Wa