tics and ninety-seven days after the death of the Pope.[134]

[Footnote 134: The disease and death, of Theodoric are thus described by
the chief contemporary authority, the "Anonymous Valesii": "Sed qui non
patitur fideles cultores suos ab alienigenis opprimi, mox intulit in eum
sententiam Arrii, auctoris religionis ejus: fluxum ventris incurrit, et
dum intra triduo evacuatus fuisset, eodem die, quo se gaudebat ecclesias
invadere, simul regnum et animam amisit".]

There is certainly something in this account of Theodoric's death which
suggests the idea of arsenical poisoning. No hint of this kind is given
by any of the annalists, but they are all hostile to Theodoric and
disposed to see in his rapid illness and most opportune death a Divine
judgment for his meditated persecution of the Church. On the other hand
it is impossible to read the account of his strange incoherent deeds and
words during the last three years of his life, without suspecting that
his brain was diseased and that he was not fully responsible for his
actions. As bearing on this question it is worth while to quote the
story of his death given by a Greek historian[135] who wrote twenty-four
years after his death. It is, perhaps, only an idle tale, but it shows
the kind of stories which were current among the citizens of Ravenna as
to the last days of their great king. "When Theodoric was dining, a few
days after the death of Symmachus and Boethius,[136] the servants placed
on the table a large fish's head. This seemed to Theodoric to be the
head of Symmachus, newly slain. The teeth seemed to gnaw the lower lip,
the eyes glared at him with wrath and frenzy, the dead man appeared, to
threaten him with utmost vengeance. Terrified by this amazing portent
and chilled to the bone with fear, he hastily sought his couch, where,
having ordered the servants to pile bed-clothes upon him, he slept
awhile. Then sending for Elpidius, the physician, he related all that
had happened to him, and wept for his sins against Symmachus and
Boethius. And with these tears and with bitter lamentations for the
tragedy in which he had taken part, he soon afterwards died, this being
the first and last injustice which he had committed against any of his
subjects. And it proceeded from his not carefully sifting, as he was
wont to do, the evidence on which a capital charge was grounded".

[Footnote 135: Procopius. He was present with Belisarius in Ravenna in
540, and wrote his hist