olden time. Arian as he
was, he prayed in St. Peter's, like the orthodox emperors of the line of
Theodosius, at the Apostle's tomb. Before the senate-house, in the forum,
Boethius greeted him with a speech. The German king admired the forum of
Trajan, as the son of Constantine, 143 years before, had admired it.
Statues in the interval had not ceased to adorn it. Romans and Franks,
heathens and Christians, alike were there: Merobaudes, the Gallic general;
Claudian, the poet from Egypt, the worshipper of Stilicho, in verses almost
worthy of Virgil; Sidonius Apollinaris, the future bishop of Clermont, who
panegyrised three emperors successively deposed and murdered. The theatre
of Pompey and the amphitheatre of Titus still rose in their beauty; and as
the Gothic king inhabited the vast and deserted halls of the Caesarean
palace, he looked down upon the games of the Circus Maximus, where the
diminished but unchanged populace of Rome still justified St. Leo's
complaint, that the heathen games drew more people than the shrines of the
martyrs whose intercession had saved Rome from Attila. In fine, St.
Fulgentius could still say, If earthly Rome was so stately, what must the
heavenly Jerusalem be!

The bearing of the Arian king to the Catholic Church and the Roman
Pontificate was just and fair almost to the end of his reign. He protected
Pope Symmachus at a difficult juncture. His minister Cassiodorus supported
and helped the election of Pope Hormisdas. The letters of Cassiodorus, as
his private secretary, counsellor, and intimate friend, remain to attest,
with the force of an eye-witness, a noble Roman and a devoted Christian,
who was also Patricius and Praetorian Prefect--the nature of the
government, as well as the state of Italian society at that time. We hardly
possess such another source of knowledge for this century. But under Pope
John I. this happy state of things broke down. A dark shadow has been
thrown upon the last years of an otherwise glorious government. The noble
Boethius, after being leader of the Roman senate and highly-prized minister
of the Gothic king, died under hideous torture, inflicted at the command of
a suspicious and irritated master. Again, he had forced upon Pope John I.
an embassy to Constantinople, and required of him to obtain from the
eastern emperor churches for Arians in his dominions. The Pope returned,
after being honoured at the eastern court as the first bishop of the world,
laden with gi