us dashed on Fortune's sea.
Thou rulest the calm eternal Powers,
But thine handiwork, too, are we.

Ah! quell these waves with their tossings high;
Let them own Thy bound and ban:
And as Thou rulest the starry sky
Rule also the world of Man!

[Illustration: COPPER PIECE OF ATHALARIC. TEN NUMMI.
(HEAD OF JUSTINIAN--?)]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV.

HEODORIC'S TOMB.

Embassy of Pope John to Constantinople--His imprisonment and
death--Execution of Symmachus--Opportune death of Theodoric--Various
stones respecting it--His mausoleum--Ultimate fate of his remains.

The death of Boethius[133] occurred probably about the middle of 524,
and in the same year, as it would seem, Theodoric left Verona and
returned to his old quarters at Ravenna. The danger from the barbarians
on the northern frontier had apparently been averted, but a far greater
danger, the hatred and the terror of his subjects of Roman origin, had
entered his kingdom. It was probably during this same year 524 that the
zeal of the orthodox Emperor Justin began to flame out against the
Arians. Their churches were taken from them and given to the Catholics,
and, as we hear that several Arians at this time embraced the Catholic
faith, we may conjecture that the usual methods of conversion in that
age, confiscation, imprisonment, and possibly torture, had been pretty
freely employed. These measures, coming close after the alleged
conspiracy of the Senators, or perhaps simultaneously with it, completed
the exasperation of Theodoric, He sent for the Pope, John I., a Tuscan,
who had been lately elevated to the Papal chair, and when the successor
of St. Peter appeared at Ravenna commanded him, with some haughtiness in
his tone, to proceed to Constantinople, to the Emperor Justin, and tell
him that "he must in no wise attempt to win over those whom he calls
heretics to the Catholic religion". The Pope is said to have made some
protestations, distinguishing between his duty to God and his duty to
his king, but nevertheless accepted a commission of some kind or other
to treat with the Emperor on the subject of mutual toleration between
Catholics and Arians.

[Footnote 133: Possibly of Albinus also, but he disappears from the
story, according to the tantalising manner of the annalists from whom we
get our information.]

(525) He set forth at the head of a brilliant tra