le-aged senators, and the young consuls sprung from this alliance,
who were the hope of their blended lines, bore, as we have seen, the
names of both father and grandfather.

Up to the year 523, Boethius appears to have enjoyed to the full the
favour of Theodoric. From a chapter of his autobiography[129] we learn
that he had already often opposed the ministers of the crown when he
found them to be unjust and rapacious men. "How often" says he, "have I
met the rush of Cunigast, when coming open-mouthed to devour the
substance of the poor! How often have I baffled the all but completed
schemes of injustice prepared by the chamberlain Trigguilla! How often
have I interposed my influence to protect the unhappy men whom the
unpunished avarice of the barbarians was worrying with infinite
calumnies! Paulinus, a man of consular rank, whose wealth the hungry
dogs of the palace had already devoured in fancy, I dragged as it were
out of their very jaws". But all these acts of righteous remonstrance
against official tyranny, though from the names given they seem to have
been chiefly directed against Gothic ministers, had not forfeited for
Boethius the favour of his sovereign. The proof of this is furnished by
the almost unexampled honour conferred upon him--certainly with
Theodoric's consent--by the elevation of his two sons to the consulship.
The exultant father, from his place in the Senate, expressed his thanks
to Theodoric in an oration of panegyric, which is now no longer extant,
but was considered by contemporaries a masterpiece of brilliant
rhetoric.

[Footnote 129: Contained in the "Consolation of Philosophy".]

So far all had gone well with the fortunes of Boethius; but now, perhaps
about the middle of 523, there came a great and calamitous change. We
must revert for a few minutes to the family circumstances of Theodoric,
in order to understand the influences which were embittering his spirit
against his Catholic--that is to say, his Roman--subjects. The year
before, his grandson Segeric, the Burgundian, had been treacherously
assassinated by order of his father, King Sigismund, who had become a
convert to the orthodox creed, and after the death of Theodoric's
daughter had married a Catholic woman of low origin. In the year 523
itself, Thrasamund, king of the Vandals, died and was succeeded by his
cousin Hilderic, son of one of the most ferocious persecutors of the
Catholic Church, but himself a convert to her creed. Not