rewarded with the bishopric of Pavia, which he held till his
death in the year 521. (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. v. p. 11 -
14. See Saxii Onomasticon, tom. ii. p. 12.)]

[Footnote 24: Our best materials are occasional hints from
Procopius and the Valesian Fragment, which was discovered by
Sirmond, and is published at the end of Ammianus Marcellinus.
The author's name is unknown, and his style is barbarous; but in
his various facts he exhibits the knowledge, without the
passions, of a contemporary. The president Montesquieu had
formed the plan of a history of Theodoric, which at a distance
might appear a rich and interesting subject.]

[Footnote 25: The best edition of the Variarum Libri xii. is that
of Joh. Garretius, (Rotomagi, 1679, in Opp. Cassiodor. 2 vols. in
fol.;) but they deserved and required such an editor as the
Marquis Scipio Maffei, who thought of publishing them at Verona.
The Barbara Eleganza (as it is ingeniously named by Tiraboschi)
is never simple, and seldom perspicuous]
The partition of the lands of Italy, of which Theodoric
assigned the third part to his soldiers, is honorably arraigned
as the sole injustice of his life. ^* And even this act may be
fairly justified by the example of Odoacer, the rights of
conquest, the true interest of the Italians, and the sacred duty
of subsisting a whole people, who, on the faith of his promises,
had transported themselves into a distant land. ^26 Under the
reign of Theodoric, and in the happy climate of Italy, the Goths
soon multiplied to a formidable host of two hundred thousand men,
^27 and the whole amount of their families may be computed by the
ordinary addition of women and children. Their invasion of