it may, Odoacer and his party were detected, after awhile, conspiring
against Dietrich, and put to death in some dark fashion. Gibbon, as
advocatus diaboli, of course gives the doubt against Dietrich, by his
usual enthymeme--All men are likely to be rogues, ergo, Dietrich was
one. Rather hard measure, when one remembers that the very men who
tell the story are Dietrich's own enemies. By far the most important
of them, the author of the Valesian Fragment, who considers Dietrich
damned as an Arian, and the murderer of Boethius and Symmachus, says
plainly that Odoacer plotted against his life. But it was a dark
business at best.

Be that as it may, Dietrich the Amal found himself in one day king of
all Italy, without a peer. And now followed a three and thirty
years' reign of wisdom, justice, and prosperity, unexampled in the
history of those centuries. Between the days of the Antonines and
those of Charlemagne, I know no such bright spot in the dark history
of Europe.

As for his transferring the third of the lands of Italy, which had
been held by Odoacer's men, to his own Goths,--that was just or
unjust (even putting out of the question the rights of conquest),
according to what manner of men Odoacer's mercenaries were, and what
right they had to the lands. At least it was done so, says
Cassiodorus, that it notoriously gave satisfaction to the Romans
themselves. One can well conceive it. Odoacer's men had been
lawless adventurers; and now law was installed as supreme. Dietrich,
in his long sojourn at the Emperor's court, had discovered the true
secret of Roman power, which made the Empire terrible even in her
fallen fortunes; and that was Law. Law, which tells every man what
to expect, and what is expected of him; and so gives, if not content,