philosopher, had not won him from the pardonable conceit about the
Romani nominis umbram.

Boethius' story is most probably true. One cannot think that that
man would die with a lie in his mouth. One cannot pass by, as the
utterances of a deliberate hypocrisy, those touching appeals to his
guiding mistress, that heavenly wisdom who has led him so long upon
the paths of truth and virtue, and who seems to him, in his miserable
cell, to have betrayed him in his hour of need. Heaven forbid.
Better to believe that Dietrich committed once in his life, a fearful
crime, than that good Boethius' famous book is such another as the
Eikon Basilike.

Boethius, again, says that the Gothic courtiers hated him, and
suborned branded scoundrels to swear away his life and that of the
senate, because he had opposed 'the hounds of the palace,' Amigast,
Trigulla, and other greedy barbarians. There was, of course, a
Gothic party and a Roman party about the court; and each hated the
other bitterly. Dietrich had favoured the Romans. But the Goths
could not have seen such men as Symmachus and Boethius the confidants
and counsellors of the Amal, without longing for their downfall; and
if, as Boethius and the Catholic historians say, the whole tragedy
arose out of a Gothic plot to destroy the Roman party, such things
have happened but too often in the world's history. The only facts
which make against the story are, that Cyprianus the accuser was a
Roman, and that Cassiodorus, who must have belonged to the Roman
party, not only is never mentioned during the whole tragedy, but was
high in power under Theodatus and Athalaric afterwards.

Add to this, that there were vague but wide-spread reports that the