lamir--Theudemir becomes king--Theodoric defeats Babai--The Teutonic
custom of the comitatus--An Ostrogothic Folc-mote--Theudemir invades the
Eastern Empire--Macedonian settlement of the Ostrogoths.

The young Theodoric, who was now in his nineteenth year, was sent back
by Leo to his father with large presents, and both the recovered son and
the tokens of Imperial favour brought joy to the heart of the father.
There had been some changes in the Ostrogothic kingdom during the boy's
absence. There had been vague and purposeless wars with the savage
nations around them,--Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri--besides one final
encounter with their old lords, the Huns. These last, we are told, they
had driven forth so hopelessly beaten from their territory, that for a
century from that time all that was left of the Hunnish nation trembled
at the very name of the Goths. But in a battle with another people of
far less renown, the barbarous Scyri beyond the Danube, Walamir, while
cheering on his men to the combat, was thrown from his horse and being
pierced by the lances of the enemy was left dead on the field. His
death, it is said, was avenged most ruthlessly on the Scyri, and
Theudemir, the brother who was next him in age, became chief king of the
Ostrogoths.

Scarcely had Theodoric returned to his home when, without communicating
his purpose to his father, he distinguished himself by a gallant deed of
arms. On the south-east of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in the country which
we now call Servia, there reigned at this time a Sclavonic chief called
Babai, who was full of pride and self-importance because of a victory
which he had lately gained over the forces of the Empire. Theodoric had
probably heard at Constantinople the other side of this story: on his
journey to the north-west he had passed through those regions, and
marked the pride of the insolent barbarian. Sympathy with the humiliated
Empire, but, far more, the young warrior's desire at once to find "a
foeman worthy of his steel", and to win laurels for himself wherewith he
might surprise his father, drove him into his new enterprise. Having
collected some of his father's guardsmen, and those of his people with
whom he was personally popular, or who were dependent upon him, he thus
mustered a little army of six thousand men, with whom he crossed the
Danube.[26] Falling suddenly upon King Babai, he defeated and slew him,
took his family prisoners, and returned with large booty