Goths were in danger; that Dietrich at least could not be ignorant of
the ambition and the talents of that terrible Justinian, Justin's
nephew, who was soon to alter, for a generation, the fortunes of the
whole Empire, and to sweep the Goths from Italy; that men's minds
must have been perplexed with fear of change, when they recollected
that Dietrich was seventy years old, without a son to succeed him,
and that a woman and a child would soon rule that great people in a
crisis, which they could not but foresee. We know that the ruin
came; is it unreasonable to suppose that the Goths foresaw it, and
made a desperate, it may be a treacherous, effort to crush once and
for all, the proud and not less treacherous senators of Rome?

So, maddened with the fancied discovery that the man whom he had
honoured, trusted, loved, was conspiring against him, Dietrich sent
Boethius to prison. He seems, however, not to have been eager for
his death; for Boethius remained there long enough to write his noble
book.

However, whether fresh proofs of his supposed guilt were discovered
or not, the day came when he must die. A cord was twisted round his
head (probably to extort confession), till his eyes burst from their
sockets, and then he was put out of his misery by a club; and so
ended the last Roman philosopher. Symmachus, his father-in-law, was
beheaded; and Pope John, as we have heard, was thrown into prison on
his return, and died after a few months. These are the tragedies
which have stained for ever the name of 'Theodoric the Great.'

Pope John seems to have fairly earned his imprisonment. For the two
others, we can only, I fear, join in the sacred pity in which their
memories have been embalmed to all succeeding generations. But we