cared for no law nor right at all. Dietrich had had to write letter
upon letter, to prevent the green and blue factions cutting each
other's throats at the public spectacles; letters to the tribunus
voluptatum, who had to look after the pantomimes and loose women,
telling him to keep the poor wretches in some decent order, and to
set them and the city an example of a better life, by being a chaste
and respectable man himself. Letter upon letter of Cassiodorus',
written in Dietrich's name, disclose a state of things in Rome on
which a Goth could look only with disgust and contempt.

And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that these
prating coxcombs--who were actually living on government bounty, and
had their daily bread, daily bath, daily oil, daily pork, daily wine,
found for them at government expense, while they lounged from the
theatre to the church, and the church to the theatre--were plotting
with Justin the scoundrel and upstart Emperor at Constantinople, to
restore forsooth the liberties of Rome? And that that was their
answer to his three and thirty years of good government, respect,
indulgence, which had raised them up again out of all the miseries of
domestic anarchy and foreign invasion?

And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that the
Catholic Clergy, with Pope John at their head, were in the very same
plot for bringing in the Emperor of Constantinople, on the grounds of
religion; because he was persecuting the Arian Goths at
Constantinople, and therefore would help them to persecute them in
Italy? And that that was their answer to his three and thirty years
of unexampled religious liberty? Would not those two facts (even the
belief that they were facts) have been enough to drive many a wise
man mad?