becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy,
some down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully
presented them with the country of which they had already taken
possession.

In every case, you see, this method went on. The failing Emperors
bought off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they
could not; and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance.
The relations between the two parties can be hardly better explained,
than by comparing them to those between the English adventurers in
Hindostan and the falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.

After a while Theodoric, or Dietrich, found himself, at his father's
death, sole king of the Ostrogoths. This period of his life is very
obscure: but one hint at least we have, which may explain his whole
future career. Side by side with him and with his father before him,
there was another Dietrich--Dietrich the One-eyed, son of Triar, a
low-born adventurer, who had got together the remnants of some low-
caste tribes, who were called the Goths of Thrace, and was swaggering
about the court of Constantinople, as, when the East Goths first met
him, what we call Warden of the Marches, with some annual pay for his
Goths. He was insolent to Theodemir and his family, and they
retaliated by bitter hatred. It was intolerable for them, Amals,
sons of Odin, to be insulted by this upstart. So they went on for
years, till the miserable religious squabble fell out--you may read
it in Gibbon--which ended in the Emperor Zeno, a low-born and cunning
man, suspected of the murder of his own son by the princess Ariadne,
being driven out of Constantinople by Basiliscus. We need not enter
into such matters, except as far as they bear on the history of
Dietrich the Amal. Dietrich the One-eyed helped Basiliscus--and then