I confess I see no harm in that, though a few words on the strange
mixture of legend and history might have been useful, because the
case of Theodoric is one of the most luculent testimonies for that
blending of fact and fancy in strictly historical times which people
find it so difficult to believe, but which offers the key, and the
only true key, for many of the most perplexing problems, both of
history and of mythology.

Originally nothing could be more different than the Dietrich of the
old legend and the Dietrich of history. The former is followed by
misfortune through the whole of his life. He is oppressed in his
youth by his uncle, the famous Ermanrich {p9}; he has to spend the
greater part of his life (thirty years) in exile, and only returns to
his kingdom after the death of his enemy. Yet whenever he is called
Dietrich of Bern, it is because the real Theodoric, the most
successful of Gothic conquerors, ruled at Verona. When his enemy was
called Otacher, instead of Sibich, it is because the real Theodoric
conquered the real Odoacer. When the king, at whose court he passes
his years of exile, is called Etzel, it is because many German heroes
had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila. That Attila died two
years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no difficulty to a
popular poet, nor even the still more glaring contradiction between
the daring and ferocious character of the real Attila and the
cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the poem of the
Nibelunge. Thus was legend quickened by history.

On the other hand, if historians, such as Gregory I (Dial. iv. 36)
{p10}, tell us that an Italian hermit had been witness in a vision to
the damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged, by the ministers