e see of
Rome and the see of Constantinople (precursor of that great schism
which, three centuries later, finally divided the Eastern and Western
Churches), and this schism, though it did not as yet lead to the actual
excommunication of Anastasius,[105] caused him to be looked upon with
coldness and suspicion by the successive Popes of Rome, and made the
rule of Theodoric, avowed Arian as he was, but anxious to hold the
balance evenly between rival churches, far more acceptable at the
Lateran than that of the schismatic partisan Anastasius.

[Footnote 105: By order of Pope Hormisdas the name of Anastasius was
solemnly "erased from the diptychs" in 519; that is, he was virtually
excommunicated after his death, but I do not find that he was formally
excommunicated by the Pope in his life-time.]

For some years after the embassy of Festus (497) and the consequent
recognition of Theodoric by the Emperor, there appears to have been
peace, if no great cordiality, between the courts of Ravenna and
Constantinople. But a war in which Theodoric found himself engaged with
the Gepidae (504), taking him back as it did into his old unwelcome
nearness to the Danube, led to the actual outbreak of hostilities
between the two States, hostilities, however, which were but of short
duration.

The great city of Sirmium on the Save, the ruins of which may still be
seen about eighty miles west of Belgrade, had once belonged to the
Western Empire and had been rightly looked upon as one of the bulwarks
of Italy. To anyone who studies the configuration of the great Alpine
chain, which parts off the Italian peninsula from the rest of Europe, it
will be manifest that it is in the north-east that that mountain barrier
is the weakest. The Maritime, Pennine, and Cottian Alps, which soar
above the plains of Piedmont and Western Lombardy, afford scarcely any
passes below the snow-line practicable for an invading army. Great
generals, like Hannibal and Napoleon, have indeed crossed them, but the
pride which they have taken in the achievement is the best proof of its
difficulty. Modern engineering science has carried its zig-zag roads up
to their high crests, has thrown its bridges across their ravines, has
defended the traveller by its massive galleries from their avalanches,
and in these later days has even bored its tunnels for miles through the
heart of the mountains; but all these are works done obviously in
defiance of Nature, and if Europe relap