fts for the churches at Rome, but without the required consent
of the emperor to give churches to the Arians. He perished in prison at
Ravenna by the same despotic command. This was in May, 526, and in August
the king himself died almost suddenly, fancying, it was said, that he saw
on a fish which was brought to his table the head of a third victim, the
illustrious Symmachus. What Catholics thought of his end is shown by St.
Gregory seventy years afterwards, who records in his Dialogues a vision
seen at Lipari on the day of the king's death, in which the Pope and
Symmachus were carrying him between them with his hands tied, to plunge him
in the crater of the volcano.

Several writers[22] have termed Theodorich a premature Charlemagne. It
seems to me that, as Genseric was the worst and most ignoble of the
Teutonic Arian princes, Theodorich was the best. The one showed how cruel
and remorseless an Arian persecutor was, the other how fair a ruler and
generous a protector the nature of things would allow an Arian monarch to
be. But in his case the end showed that the Gothic dominion in Italy rested
only on the personal ability of the king, and, further, that no stable
union could take place until these German-Arian races had been incorporated
by the Catholic Church into her own body.[23]

This truth is yet more illustrated by a double contrast between Theodorich
and Clovis. In personal character the former was far superior to the
latter. Clovis was converted at the age of thirty, and died at forty-five.
Yet the effect of the fifteen years of his reign after he became a Catholic
was permanent. From that moment the Franks became a power. In that short
time Clovis obtained possession of a very great part of France, and that
possession went on and was confirmed to his line and people. The
thirty-three years of Theodorich secured to Italy a time of peace, even of
glory, which did not fall to its lot for ages afterwards. Yet the effect of
his government passed with him; his daughter and heiress, the noble
princess Amalasuntha, in whose praise Cassiodorus exhausts himself, was
murdered; his kingdom was broken up, and Cassiodorus himself, retiring from
public life, confessed in his monastic life, continued for a generation,
how vain had been the attempt of the Arian king to overcome the
antagonistic forces of race and religion by justice, valour, and
forbearance.

It was fitting that the attempt should be made by the noblest of Te