visitor before he went
eastward to build his marvellous New Rome beside the Bosphorus. His son
Constantius in middle life paid one memorable visit(357). Thirty years
later Theodosius followed his example. His son Honorius celebrated
there(403) his doubtful triumph over Alaric, and his grandson,
Valentinian III., was standing in the Roman Campus Martius when he fell
under the daggers of the avengers of Aetius. But the fact that these
visits are so pointedly mentioned shows the extreme rarity of their
occurrence; nor was any great alteration wrought herein by Theodoric,
for this visit to Rome, which we are now about to consider, and which
lasted for six months, seems to have been the only one that he ever paid
in the course of his reign of thirty-three years.

He came at an opportune time, when there was a lull in the strife,
amounting almost to civil war, caused by a disputed Papal election. Two
years before, two bodies of clergy had met on the same day (22d.
November) in different churches, in order to elect the successor to a
deceased pope. The larger number, assembled in the mother-church, the
Lateran, elected a deacon of Sardinian extraction, named Symmachus. The
smaller but apparently more aristocratic body, backed by the favour of
the majority of the Senate and supported by the delegates of the
Emperor, met in the church now called by the name of S. Maria Maggiore
and voted for the arch-presbyter Laurentius.

The effect of this contested election was to throw Rome into confusion.
Parties of armed men who favoured the cause of one or the other
candidate paraded the City, and all the streets were filled with riot
and bloodshed. It seemed as if the days of Marius and Sulla were come
back again, though it would have been impossible to explain to either
Marius or Sulla what was the nature of the contest, a dispute as to the
right to be considered successor to a fisherman of Bethsaida. When the
anarchy was becoming intolerable, the Senate, Clergy, and People
determined to invoke the mediation of Theodoric, thus furnishing the
highest testimony to the reputation for fairness and impartiality which
had been earned by the Arian king. Both the rival bishops repaired to
Ravenna, and having laid the case before the king, heard his answer.
"Whichsoever candidate was first chosen, if he also received the
majority of votes, shall be deemed duly elected". Both qualifications
were united in Symmachus, who was therefore for a time