ge and other German poems. Well, that is the
Dietrich of the German people, that is what the Germans themselves have
made of him, by transferring to their great Gothic king some of the most
incredible achievements of one of their oldest legendary heroes. They
have changed even his name, and as the children in the schools of Germany
{8} still speak of him as their Dietrich von Bern, let him be to us too
Dietrich, not simply the Ost-gothic Theoderic, but the German Dietrich.

I confess I see no harm in that, though a few words on the strange
mixture of legend and history might have been useful, because the case of
Theodoric is one of the most luculent testimonies for that blending of
fact and fancy in strictly historical times which people find it so
difficult to believe, but which offers the key, and the only true key,
for many of the most perplexing problems, both of history and of
mythology.

Originally nothing could be more different than the Dietrich of the old
legend and the Dietrich of history. The former is followed by misfortune
through the whole of his life. He is oppressed in his youth by his
uncle, the famous Ermanrich {9}; he has to spend the greater part of his
life (thirty years) in exile, and only returns to his kingdom after the
death of his enemy. Yet whenever he is called Dietrich of Bern, it is
because the real Theodoric, the most successful of Gothic conquerors,
ruled at Verona. When his enemy was called Otacher, instead of Sibich,
it is because the real Theodoric conquered the real Odoacer. When the
king, at whose court he passes his years of exile, is called Etzel, it is
because many German heroes had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila.
That Attila died two years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no
difficulty to a popular poet, nor even the still more glaring
contradiction between the daring and ferocious character of the real
Attila and the cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the
poem of the Nibelunge. Thus was legend quickened by history.

On the other hand, if historians, such as Gregory I (Dial. iv. 36) {10},
tell us that an Italian hermit had been witness in a vision to the
damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged, by the ministers of
divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths
of the infernal world, we may recognise in the heated imagination of the
orthodox monk some recollection of the mysterious end of the legendary
Die