w strong would be the antagonism between culture and
national patriotism in the heart of a princess like Amalasuentha.

Thus the position of things during the reign of the young Athalaric was
strangely altered from that which had existed under his grandfather. The
"King of the Goths and Romans" was under the sway of a mother who would
make him virtually "King of the Romans", only leaving the Goths outside
in moody isolation. Of course every step that Amalasuentha, in the
enthusiasm of her love for things Roman, took towards the Roman Senate
carried her farther from the traditions of her people, and lost her the
love of some stern old Gothic warriors. And, moreover, with all her
great intellectual endowments, it is clear that this highly cultivated,
statuesque, and stately woman had little skill in reading character,
little power in estimating the force of human motives. She had read (we
may conjecture) Virgil and Sophocles, but she did not know what was in
the heart of a child, and she knew not how long a scoundrel will wait
for his revenge.

At the time that the Gothic kingdom was thus being administered by a
child and a woman, the Roman Empire, which had seemed effete and
decaying, was astonishing the world by its recovered and increasing
vigour. Since the death of Theodosius (more than one hundred and thirty
years before that of Theodoric) no great historic name had illustrated
the annals of the Eastern Empire, But now, a year after the accession of
Athalaric at Ravenna, the death of Justin, in the palace at
Constantinople, (1st Aug., 527) brought upon the scene an Emperor who,
whatever his faults, however disastrous (as I hold it to have been) his
influence on the general happiness of the human race, made for himself
undoubtedly one of the very greatest names in the whole series from
Julius to Palaeologus--the world-famous Emperor _Justinian._

With Justinian's long wars on the Eastern frontier of his Empire we have
here no concern. He was matched there against a terrible rival, Chosroes
Nushirvan, and at most succeeded (and that not always) in upholding the
banner of Europe against triumphant Asia. His domestic affairs, his
marriage with the actress Theodora, the strange ascendancy which she
exerted over him through life, his magnificent buildings, the rebellion
in Constantinople (springing out of the factions of the Hippodrome)
which had all but hurled him from his throne,--these also are all beyond
our province