But I think, even with no other help than theirs, we may
see why Dietrich would have looked with horror on any intimacy between
the Church of Rome and the Court of Constantinople.

We must remember first what the Greek Empire was then, and who was the
new Emperor. Anastasius the poor old Emperor, dying at eighty with his
heart broken by monks and priests, had an ugly dream; and told it to
Amantius the eunuch and lord chamberlain. Whereon Amantius said he had
had a dream too;--how a great hog flew at him as he was in waiting in the
very presence, and threw him down and eat him fairly up. Which came
true--though not in the way Amantius expected. On the death of
Anastasius he determined to set up as Emperor a creature of his own. For
this purpose he must buy the guards; to which noble end he put a large
sum of treasure into the hands of Justin, senator, and commander-in-chief
of the said guards, who takes the money, and spends it on his own
account; so that the miserable eunuch finds, not his man, but Justin
himself, Emperor, and his hard-earned money spent against him. The mere
rise of this unscrupulous swindler and his still more unscrupulous
nephew, Justinian, would have been enough to rouse Dietrich's suspicion,
if not fear.

Deep and unspeakable must have been the royal Amal's contempt for the
man. For he must have known him well at Constantinople in his youth;
known how he was a Goth or other Teuton after all, though he was called a
Dardanian; how his real name was Uprauda (upright), the son of
Stock--which Uprauda he had latinized into Justinus. The Amal knew well
how he had entered the Emperor's guard; how he had intrigued and fought
his way up (for the man did not lack courage and conduct) to his
general's commission; and now, by a crowning act of roguery, to the
Empire. He had known too, most probably, the man's vulgar peasant wife,
who, in her efforts to ape royalty, was making herself the laughing-stock
of the people, and who was urging on her already willing husband to
persecute. And this man he saw ready to convulse his own Empire by
beginning a violent persecution against the Arians. He was dangerous
enough as a villain, doubly dangerous as a bigot also.

We must remember next what the Greek Church was then; a chaos of
intrigue, villainy, slander, and wild fury, tearing to pieces itself and
the whole Empire by religious feuds, in which the doctrine in question
becomes invisible amid the passion