little difference between Odoacer and Theodoric. The change of rulers
did not affect their material interests, since Theodoric merely
appropriated that proportion of the cultivated land (one-third) which
Odoacer had claimed for his followers. Nor was submission inconsistent
with the loyalty demanded by the Eastern Empire; since for the moment it
suited imperial policy to accept the Visigothic King as the successor of
Odoacer. Theodoric reigned over Italy for thirty-three years (493-526).
A tolerant and enlightened ruler, he spared no effort to give his rule a
legal character, and to protect the Italians against oppression. Two
eminent Romans, Liberius and Cassiodorus, acted successively as his
confidential advisers and interpreted his policy to their countrymen. No
attempt was made to fuse the Ostrogoths with the Italians. The invaders
remained, an army quartered on the soil, subject for most purposes to
their own law. But the law of the Italians was similarly respected;
Theodoric applied the Roman law of crime impartially to both races; and
he rigourously interdicted the prosecution of private wars and feuds.
Unfortunately his subordinates were less scrupulous than himself. The
Ostrogothic soldiery maintained the national character for lawlessness;
the royal officers and judges were corrupt; men of means were harassed
by blackmailers and false informers; the poor and helpless were
frequently enslaved by force or fraud. The Italians could not forgive
the Arian tenets of their new rulers, even though the orthodox were
tolerated and protected. Naturally the clergy and the remnants of the
Roman aristocracy sighed for an imperial restoration. And Theodoric,
rightly or wrongly, came to suspect them all of treason. In his later
years he meted out a terrible and barbarous justice to the supposed
authors of conspiracy--notably to the Senator Boethius, who was beaten
to death with clubs after a long period of rigourous imprisonment.
Boethius has vindicated his own fair name, and blackened for ever that
of Theodoric, by his immortal treatise, the _Consolation of Philosophy_,