ced to believe in Christianity against his will. Nor
was this willingness to protect the Jews from popular fanaticism
peculiar to Theodoric. Always, so long as the Goths, either the Western
or Eastern branch, remained Arian, the Jews found favour in their eyes,
and Jacob had rest under the shadow of the sons of Odin. Now, therefore,
the king sent an edict addressed to Eutharic and Bishop Peter, ordaining
that a pecuniary contribution should be levied on all the Christian
citizens of Ravenna, out of which the synagogues should be rebuilt, and
that those who were not able to pay their share of this contribution
should be flogged through the streets, the crier going behind them and
in a loud voice proclaiming their offence. The order was doubtless
obeyed, but from that day there was a secret spirit of rebellion in the
hearts of the Roman citizens of Ravenna.

From this time onward occasions of difference between Theodoric and his
Roman subjects were frequently arising. For some reason which is not
explained to us, he ordered the Catholic church of St. Stephen in the
suburbs of Verona to be destroyed. Then came suspicion, the child of
rancour. An order was put forth forbidding the inhabitants of Roman
origin to wear any arms, and this prohibition extended even to
pocket-knives. In the excited state of men's minds earth and heaven
seemed to them to be full of portents..There were earthquakes; there was
a comet with a fiery tail which blazed for fifteen days; a poor Gothic
woman lay down under a portico near Theodoric's palace at Ravenna and
gave birth (so we are assured) to four dragons, two of which, having one
head between them, were captured, while the other two, sailing away
eastward through the clouds, were seen to fall headlong into the sea.

More important than these old wives' fables was the changed attitude and
the wavering loyalty of the Roman Senate. From the remarks made in an
earlier chapter,[128] it will be clear that a conscientious Roman
citizen might truly feel that he owed a divided allegiance to the
Ostrogoth, his ruler _de facto_, and to the Augustus at Constantinople,
his sovereign _de jure_. Through the years of religious schism this
conflict of duties had slumbered, but now, with the enthusiastic
reconciliation between the see of Rome and the throne of Constantinople,
it awoke; and in that age when, as has been already said, religion was
nationality, an orthodox Eastern emperor seemed a much more fitti