requested that on a day, the most ilhistrious festival of his life, they would adorn him with the rich garments which they had worked with their own hands. "Our glory," said he, "is mutual and inseparable. You are known to the world as the mother of Theodoric; and it becomes me to prove that I am the genuine offspring of those heroes from whom I claim my descent." The wife or concubine of Theodemir was inspired with the spirit of the German matrons who esteemed their sons' honour far above their safety; and it is reported that in a desperate action, when Theodoric himself was hurried along by the torrent of a flying crowd, she boldly met them at the entrance of the camp, and, by her generous reproaches, drove them back on the swords of the enemy.[1]
His capitulation and death. A.D. 493, March 5 From the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, Theodoric reigned by the right of conquest;[2] the Vandal ambassadors surrendered the land of Sicily, as a lawful appendage of his kingdom; and he was accepted as the deliverer of Rome by the senate and people, who had shut their gates against the flying usurper.[3] Ravenna alone, secure in the fortifications of art and nature, still sustained [490-493] a siege of almost three years; and the daring sallies of Odoacer carried slaughter and dismay into the Gothic camp. At length, destitute of provisions and hopeless of relief, that unfortunate [Feb. 25, 493] monarch yielded to the groans of his subjects and the clamours of his soldiers. A treaty of peace was negotiated by the bishop of Ravenna; the Ostrogoths were admitted into the city; and the [March 15] hostile kings consented, under the sanction of an oath, to rule with equal and undivided authority the provinces of Italy.[4] The event of such an agreement may be easily foreseen. After some days had been devoted to the semblance of joy and friendship, Odoacer, in the midst of a solemn banquet, [March 15] was stabbed by the- ↑ This anecdote is related on the modern but respectable authority of Sigonius (Op. tom. i. p. 580. De Occident. Imp. l. xv.): his words are curious: "Would you return?" &c. She presented, and almost displayed, the original recess. [The anecdote is worthless; but whence did Sigonius derive it?]
- ↑ [In the Panegyric of Ennodius, a passage (in c. x. p. 209, ed. Vogel) which escaped Gibbon's notice darkly mentions a slaughter of the adherents of Odovacar in all parts of Italy, carried out (apparently in 490 A.D.) by a prearranged scheme. His phrases suggest that the clergy were privy to it. Cp. Dahn, Kön. der Germanen, ii. 80.]
- ↑ Hist. Miscell. l. xv., a Roman history from Janus to the ninth century, an Epitome of Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Theophanes, which Muratori has published from a Ms. in the Ambrosian library (Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 100).
- ↑ [This was an arrangement which obviously had no elements of permanence, and Tillemont rejected the statement of Procopius (i. 1), on whose single authority it depended until the discovery of a confirmatory fragment of John of Antioch (214a, Müller, F.H.G. v.).]
