de in their flight by
the cranes of Strymon. Though so ardent a lover, he had composed no
lyric or elegy in Veranilda's honour; his last poetical effort was made
in his sixteenth year, when, to his own joy, and to the admiration of
his friends, he wrote a distich, the verses of which read the same
whether you began from the left hand or the right. Nowadays if he ever
opened a book it was some historian of antiquity. Livy, by choice, who
reminded him of his country's greatness, and reawakened in him the
desire to live a not inglorious life.

Of his latter boyhood part had been spent at Ravenna, where his father
Probus, a friend as well as kinsman of the wise minister Cassiodorus,
now and then made a long sojourn; and he had thus become accustomed to
the society of the more cultivated Goths, especially of those who were
the intimates of the learned Queen Amalasuntha. Here, too, he learned a
certain liberality in religious matters; for it was Cassiodorus who, in
one of the rescripts given from the Gothic court, wrote those memorable
words: 'Religious faith we have no power to impose, seeing that no man
can be made to believe against his will.' Upon the murder of
Amalasuntha, when the base Theodahad ruled alone, and ruin lay before
the Gothic monarchy, Probus, despairing of Italy, following the example
of numerous Roman nobles, migrated to Byzantium. His wife being dead,
and his daughter having entered a convent, he was accompanied only by
Basil, then eighteen years of age. A new world thus opened before
Basil's mind; its brilliancy at first dazzled and delighted him, but
very soon he perceived the difference between a noble's life at Rome or
Ravenna under the mild rule of the Goths, and that led by so-called
Romans in the fear of Justinian and of Theodora. His father,
disappointed in hopes of preferment which had been held out to him,
gladly accepted a mission which would take him back to Italy: he was
one of the envoys sent to Belisarius during the siege of Ravenna, to
urge the conclusion of the Gothic war and command the return of the
Patricius as soon as might be for service against the Persians; and
with him came Basil. On the journey Probus fell ill; he was able to
cross the Adriatic, but no sooner touched Italian Soil than he breathed
his last.

Then it was that Basil, representing his father in the Imperial
mission, came face to face with Belisarius, and conceived a boundless
enthusiasm for the great commander, wh