betrays his prejudice and passion: in Graeciam debacchantem
...Zenonis munificentia pene pacatus ...beneficiis nunquam
satiatus, &c.]
[Footnote *: Gibbon has omitted much of the complicated intrigues
of the Byzantine court with the two Theodorics. The weak emperor
attempted to play them one against the other, and was himself in
turn insulted, and the empire ravaged, by both. The details of
the successive alliance and revolt, of hostility and of union,
between the two Gothic chieftains, to dictate terms to the
emperor, may be found in Malchus. - M.]

In every state of his fortune, the prudence and firmness of
Theodoric were equally conspicuous; whether he threatened
Constantinople at the head of the confederate Goths, or retreated
with a faithful band to the mountains and sea-coast of Epirus.
At length the accidental death of the son of Triarius ^13
destroyed the balance which the Romans had been so anxious to
preserve, the whole nation acknowledged the supremacy of the
Amali, and the Byzantine court subscribed an ignominious and
oppressive treaty. ^14 The senate had already declared, that it
was necessary to choose a party among the Goths, since the public
was unequal to the support of their united forces; a subsidy of
two thousand pounds of gold, with the ample pay of thirteen
thousand men, were required for the least considerable of their
armies; ^15 and the Isaurians, who guarded not the empire but the
emperor, enjoyed, besides the privilege of rapine, an annual
pension of five thousand pounds. The sagacious mind of Theodoric
soon perceived that he was odious to the Romans, and suspected by
the Barbarians: he understood the popular murmur, that his
subjects were exposed in their frozen huts to intolerable