vereigns were put
forth to all the Goths and Italians. In them Theodahad grovelled in
admiration of the wisdom, the virtue, the eloquence of the noble lady
who had raised him to so high a station and who had done him the
inestimable favour of making him feel her justice before she bestowed
upon him her grace. Few weeks, however, passed, before Amalasuentha was
a prisoner, hurried away to a little lonely island in the Lake of
Bolsena in Tuscany by order of the partner of her throne. Having taken
this step, Theodahad began with craven apologies to excuse it to the
Eastern Caesar. "He had done no harm to Amalasuentha; he would do no harm
to her, though she had been guilty of the most nefarious designs against
him: he only sought to protect her from the vengeance of the kinsmen of
the three Gothic nobles whom she had murdered". An embassy composed of
Roman Senators was ordered to carry this tale to Justinian and to
confirm it by a letter which, under duresse, had been wrung from the
unfortunate princess in her prison. When the ambassadors arrived at
Constantinople one of them spoke the words of the part which had been
set down for him and declared that Theodahad had done nothing against
Amalasuentha of which any reasonable complaint could be made; but the
others, headed by the brave Liberius, "a man of singularly high and
noble nature, and of the most watchful regard to truth", told the whole
story exactly as it had happened to the Emperor. The result was a
despatch to the ambassador Peter enjoining him to find means of
assuring Amalasuentha that Justinian would exert all his influence for
her safety, and to inform Theodahad publicly, in presence of all his
counsellors, that it was at his own peril that he would touch a hair of
the head of the Gothic queen.

Scarcely, however, had Peter touched the Italian shore--he had not
conveyed a letter to the prison nor uttered a word in the palace--when
the sad tragedy was ended. The relations of the three nobles, who had
"blood-feud" with the queen, and who were perhaps, according to the code
of barbarian morality, justified in avenging their death, made their way
to Amalasuentha's island prison, and there, in that desolate abode, the
daughter of Theodoric met her death at their hands, dying with all that
stately dignity and cold self-possession with which she had lived.

Justinian's ambassador at once proceeded to the King's Court, and there,
in the presence of all the Gothic nobl