The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men
and mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and
gambling till their families were in want. They send to the Amal.
'While thou art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving--come
back ere we are ruined.'

They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his
mercenaries. He was growing now to be a great power; styling himself
'King of nations {p109},' giving away to the Visigoths the
Narbonnaise, the last remnant of the Western Empire; collecting round
him learned Romans like Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus;
respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly doing his best to
govern well. His mercenaries, however, would not be governed. Under
their violence and oppression agriculture and population were both
failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of 'AEmilia, Tuscia, ceteraeque
provinciae in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.'

Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the
Goths to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they
despised him himself as a man of low birth. But his father AEdecon
had been chief of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal
blood. It is very unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of
Teutons would have followed any man who had not Odin's blood in his
veins. Was there a stain on Odoacer from his early connexion with
Attila? Or was the hatred against his men more than himself,
contempt especially of the low-caste Herules,--a question of race,
springing out of those miserable tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons
always divided and weak? Be that as it may, Odoacer had done a deed
which raised this hatred to open fury. He had gone over the Alps