Theodoric the Goth by Thomas Hodgkin

Author:Thomas Hodgkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

CHAPTER XII.

ROME AND RAVENNA.

Theodoric's visit to Rome--Disputed Papal election--Theodoric's speech at the Golden Palm--The monk Fulgentius--Bread-distributions--Races in the Circus--Conspiracy of Odoin--Return to Ravenna--Marriage festivities of Amalaberga--Description of Ravenna--Mosaics in the churches--S. Apollinare Dentro--Processions of virgins and martyrs--Arian baptistery--So-called palace of Theodoric--Vanished statues.

The death of Anastasius was followed by changes in the attitude towards one another of Pope and Emperor, which embittered the closing years of Theodoric and caused his sun to set in clouds. But before we occupy ourselves with these transactions, we may consider a little more carefully the relations between Theodoric and his subjects in the happier days, the early and middle portion of his reign, and for this purpose we will first of all hear what the chroniclers have to tell us of a memorable visit to Rome which he paid in the eighth year after his accession, that year which, according to our present chronology, is marked as the five hundredth after the birth of Christ.[113]

[Footnote 113: The chronology now in use, invented by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, a friend of Cassiodorus, was not adopted till some years after the death of Theodoric. Consequently, 500 a.d. would be known in Rome only as 1252 A.U.C. (from the foundation of the City), and would have no special interest attaching to it.]

Rome had been for more than two centuries strangely neglected by the rulers who in her name lorded it over the civilised world. Ever since Diocletian's reconstruction of the Empire, it had been a rare event for an Augustus to be seen within her walls. Even the Emperor who had Italy for his portion generally resided at Milan or Ravenna rather than on the banks of the Tiber. Constantine was but a hasty visitor before he went eastward to build his marvellous New Rome beside the Bosphorus. His son Constantius in middle life paid one memorable visit(357). Thirty years later Theodosius followed his example. His son Honorius celebrated there(403) his doubtful triumph over Alaric, and his grandson, Valentinian III., was standing in the Roman Campus Martius when he fell under the daggers of the avengers of Aëtius. But the fact that these visits are so pointedly mentioned shows the extreme rarity of their occurrence; nor was any great alteration wrought herein by Theodoric, for this visit to Rome, which we are now about to consider, and which lasted for six months, seems to have been the only one that he ever paid in the course of his reign of thirty-three years.

He came at an opportune time, when there was a lull in the strife, amounting almost to civil war, caused by a disputed Papal election. Two years before, two bodies of clergy had met on the same day (22d. November) in different churches, in order to elect the successor to a deceased pope. The larger number, assembled in the mother-church, the Lateran, elected a deacon of Sardinian extraction, named Symmachus. The smaller but apparently more aristocratic body, backed by the favour of the majority of the Senate and supported by the delegates of the Emperor, met in the church now called by the name of S.

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