ming
retribution, would decline to be known as his adherents, and would stand
aloof from his work of re-organization. But when it was known that even
the great Augustus at Constantinople, "Our Lord Anastasius, Father of
his Country" (as the coins styled him), recognised the royalty of
Theodoric, and had in some sort confided to him the government of Italy,
all the great army of civil servants, who performed the functions of
that highly specialised organism, the Roman State, could, without fear
and without reproach, accept office under the new-comer, and could look
forward again, as they had done before, to a fortunate official career,
to the honours and emoluments which were the recognised reward of the
successful civil servant.

In the next chapter, I shall describe with a little more detail the
character and the duties of some of these Roman officials. For the
present we will rather consider the nature of the work which Theodoric
accomplished through their instrumentality. We have already heard from a
nearly contemporary chronicler, the story of some of the great
civilising works which he wrought in the wasted land, the aqueducts of
Ravenna and Verona, the walls of Verona and Pavia, the baths, the
palace, and the amphitheatre. More important for the great mass of his
subjects was the perfect security which he gave to the merchant for his
commerce, to the husbandman for the fruit of his toil. Corn, as we have
seen, sank to the extraordinarily low price of twelve shillings a
quarter. But this low price did not mean, as it might in our country,
the depression of the agricultural interest, through the rivalry of the
foreign producer. On the contrary, the great economic symptom of
Theodoric's reign--and under the circumstances a most healthy
symptom--was that Italy, from a corn-importing became a corn-exporting
country. Under the old emperors, whose rule was a most singular blending
of autocracy and demagogy, in fact a kind of crowned socialism, every
nerve had been strained to bring from Alexandria and Carthage the corn
which was distributed gratuitously to the idle population of Rome. Under
such hopeless competition as this, together with the demoralising
influence of slave labour, large tracts of Italy had actually gone out
of cultivation. Now, by political changes, the merit of which must not
be claimed for the Ostrogothic government, both Egypt and Africa had
become unavailable for the supply of the necessities of Rom