King in the letters which he had
addressed to the Byzantine Emperor.

In this accusation was Cyprian acting the part of an honest man or of a
base informer? The times were difficult: the relations of a Roman
Senator to Emperor and King were, as I have striven to show, intricate
and ill-defined; it was hard for even good men to know on which side
preponderated the obligations of loyalty, of honour, and of patriotism.
On the one hand Cyprian may have been a true and faithful servant of
Theodoric, who had in his embassy at Constantinople discovered the
threads of a treasonable intrigue, and who would not see his master
betrayed even by Romans without denouncing their treason. As a real
patriot he may have seen that the days of purely Roman rule in Italy
were over, that there must be some sort of amalgamation with these new
Teutonic conquerors, who evidently had the empire of the world before
them, that it would be better and happier, and in a certain sense more
truly Roman, for Italy to be ruled by a heroic "King of the Goths and
Romans" than for her to sink into a mere province ruled by exarchs and
logothetes from corrupt and distant Constantinople. This is one possible
view of Cyprian's character and purposes. On the other hand, he may have
been a slippery adventurer, intent on carving out his own fortune by
whatever means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the noblest of
his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition. In his secret heart
he may have cared nothing for the noble old Goth, his master, with whom
he had so often ridden in the pine-wood; nothing, too, for the great
name of Rome, the city in which his father had once sat as consul. Long
accustomed to state both sides of a case with equal dexterity, and
without any belief in either, this nimble-tongued advocate, who had
already found that Greece had nothing to teach him that was new, may
have had in his inmost soul no belief in God, in country, or in duty,
but in Cyprian alone. Both views are possible; we have before us only
the passionate invectives of his foes and the stereotyped commendations
of his virtues penned by his official superiors, and I will not attempt
to decide between them.

When Cyprian brought his charge of disloyalty against Albinus, the
accused Patrician, who was called into the presence of the King, at once
denied the accusation. An angry debate probably followed, in the course
of which Boethius claimed to speak The attention of