he Royal Patrimony had to complain
that even the king's domain was suffering from Theodahad's depredations.
He was summoned to the _Comitatus_ or King's Court, at Ravenna; his
various acts of alleged spoliation were inquired into; their injustice
was clearly proved, and he was compelled by Amalasuentha to restore the
wrongfully appropriated lands.

It was perhaps before this process was actually begun, but after
Theodahad was made aware that the clamour against him was growing louder
and had reached the ears of his cousin, that he sought an interview with
the Bishops of Ephesus and Philippi, who had come over to Italy on some
ecclesiastical errand from the Emperor to the Pope. To these clerical
ambassadors Theodahad made the extraordinary proposal that Justinian
should buy of him the province of Tuscany for a certain large sum of
money, to which was to be added the dignity of a Senator of
Constantinople. If this negotiation could be carried through, the
diligent student of Plato and Cicero proposed to end his days in
dignified retirement at the Eastern capital.

We may now return to the palace of Ravenna and be present at the
audience granted, probably in the summer of 534, by Amalasuentha to
Alexander, the ambassador of Justinian. To the demands for the surrender
of Lilybaeum and the complaints as to the enlistment of Hunnish
deserters, Amalasuentha made, in public, a suitable and sprited reply:
"It was not the part of a great and courageous monarch to pick a quarrel
with an orphaned king, too young to be accurately informed of what was
going on in all parts of his dominions, about such paltry matters as the
possession of Lilybaeum, a barren and worthless rock of Sicily, about
ten wild Huns who had sought refuge in Italy, and about the offence
which the Gothic soldiers had, in their ignorance, committed against a
friendly city in Moesia. Justinian should look at the other side of the
account, should remember the aid and comfort which his soldiers, on
their expedition against the Vandals, had received from the friendly
Ostrogoths in Sicily, and should ask himself whether without that aid he
would ever have recovered possession of Africa. If Lilybaeum did belong
by right to the Emperor it was not too great a reward for him to bestow
on his young ally for such opportune assistance".

This was publicly the answer of Amalasuentha--a bold and determined
refusal to surrender the rock of Lilybaeum. In her private interview w