support and
I may be fittingly clothed with the purple of my ancestors.

[Footnote 636: 'Dominam rerum.']

'I know that this elevation of mine was the object of the wishes of
the community. Your whispers in my favour might have been a source of
danger, but now your openly expressed acclamations are my proudest
boast. You wished that God should bestow upon me this honour, to which
I for my part should not have ventured to aspire. But if I have, as I
trust I have, any influence with you, let me prevail upon you to join
with me in perpetually hymning the glorious praises of our Lady and
Sister. She has wished to strengthen the greatness of our Empire by
associating me therein, even as the two eyes of a man harmoniously
co-operate towards a single act of vision. Divine grace joins us
together: our near relationship cements our friendship. Persons of
diverse character may find it an arduous matter thus to work in
common; but, to those who resemble one another in the goodness of
their intentions, the difficulty would rather be _not_ to work in
harmony. The man devoid of forethought may fear the changing of his
purposes; but he who is really great in wisdom eagerly seeks wisdom in
another.

'But of all the gifts which with this regal dignity the Divine favour
has bestowed upon me, none pleases me more than the fact that I should
have been thus chosen by that wisest Lady who is herself a moral
balance of the utmost delicacy, and who made me first feel her justice
before advancing me to this high dignity. For, as you know, she
ordained that I should plead my cause against private persons in the
common judgment-hall[637]. Oh wonderful nobility of her mind! Oh
admirable justice, which the world may well tell of! She hesitated
not first to subject her own relation to the course of public justice,
even him whom, a little after, she would raise above the laws
themselves. She thoroughly searched the conscience of him to whom she
was about to hand over the dignity of kingship, that she might be
recognised as sovereign Lady of all, and that I, when tested, might be
advanced by her to the throne.

[Footnote 637: 'Cujus prius ideo justitiam pertuli ut prius
[posterius?] ad ejus provectionis gratiam pervenirem. Causas enim, ut
scitis, jure communi nos fecit dicere cum privatis.' We have here, no
doubt, an allusion to the punishment which, as we learn from
Procopius, Amalasuentha inflicted on her cousin for his various acts
of injust