cruel energy which prompted them to daily
crimes. In truth, they thought that each day was wasted which they had
not made memorable by some sort of outrage". In 494, with the general
pacification of Italy, they disappear from view: and we may conjecture,
though we are not told, that Pavia was taken, and that Frederic received
his deserts at the hands of Theodoric.

II. In the year 490 Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, crossed the Alps
and descended into Italy to mingle in the fray as an antagonist of
Theodoric. In the same year, probably at the same time, Alaric II., king
of the Visigoths, entered Italy as his ally. A great battle was fought
on the river Adda, ten miles east of Milan, in which Odovacar, who had
emerged from the shelter of Ravenna, was again completely defeated. He
fled once more to Ravenna, which he never again quitted.

[Footnote 55: Ennodius (writing the life of Bishop Epiphanius).]

While these operations were proceeding, Theodoric's own family and the
non-combatants of the Ostrogothic nation were in safe shelter, though in
somewhat narrow quarters, in the strong city of Pavia, whose Bishop,
Epiphanius, was the greatest saint of his age, and one for whom
Theodoric felt an especial veneration. No doubt they must have left that
city before the evil-minded Rugians entered it (492), but we hear
nothing of the circumstances of their flight or removal.

As for the Burgundian king, he does not seem to have been guided by any
high considerations of policy in his invasion of Italy, and having been
induced to conclude a treaty with Theodoric, he returned to his own
royal city of Lyons with goodly spoil and a long train of hapless
captives torn from the fields of Liguria.

III. These disturbing elements being cleared away, we may now turn our
attention to the true key of the position and the central event of the
war, the siege of Odovacar in Ravenna. After Tufa's second change of
sides, and during the Burgundian invasion of Italy, there was no
possibility of keeping up an Ostrogothic blockade of the city of the
marshes. Odovacar emerged thence, won back the lower valley of the Po,
and marching on Milan, inflicted heavy punishment on the city, for the
welcome given to Theodoric. In the battle of the Adda, 11 August, 490,
however, as has been already mentioned, he sustained a severe defeat, in
which he lost one of his most faithful friends and ablest counsellors, a
Roman noble named Pierius. After his flight