piness he had so assiduously
labored to promote; and his mind was soured by indignation, jealousy,
and the bitterness of unrequited love. The Gothic conqueror condescended
to disarm the unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons
of offence, and excepting only a small knife for domestic use. The
deliverer of Rome was accused of conspiring with the vilest informers
against the lives of senators whom he suspected of a secret and
treasonable correspondence with the Byzantine court. After the death of
Anastasius, the diadem had been placed on the head of a feeble old man;
but the powers of government were assumed by his nephew Justinian, who
already meditated the extirpation of heresy, and the conquest of Italy
and Africa. A rigorous law, which was published at Constantinople, to
reduce the Arians by the dread of punishment within the pale of the
church, awakened the just resentment of Theodoric, who claimed for his
distressed brethren of the East the same indulgence which he had so long
granted to the Catholics of his dominions. At his stern command, the
Roman pontiff, with four _illustrious_ senators, embarked on an embassy,
of which he must have alike dreaded the failure or the success.
The singular veneration shown to the first pope who had visited
Constantinople was punished as a crime by his jealous monarch; the
artful or peremptory refusal of the Byzantine court might excuse an
equal, and would provoke a larger, measure of retaliation; and a mandate
was prepared in Italy, to prohibit, after a stated day, the exercise of
the Catholic worship. By the bigotry of his subjects and enemies, the
most tolerant of princes was driven to the brink of persecution; and the
life of Theodoric was too long, since he lived to condemn the virtue of
Boethius and Symmachus.

The senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully
could have acknowledged for their countryman. As a wealthy orphan,
he inherited the patrimony and honors of the Anician family, a name
ambitiously assumed by the kings and emperors of the age; and the
appellation of Manlius asserted his genuine or fabulous descent from
a race of consuls and dictators, who had repulsed the Gauls from the
Capitol, and sacrificed their sons to the discipline of the republic. In
the youth of Boethius the studies of Rome were not totally abandoned;
a Virgil is now extant, corrected by the hand of a consul; and the
professors of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence