tnote 1: Anon. Valesii. This was probably Bishop Maximian, a
Catholic bishop of Ravenna. I follow, with a few changes, Mr.
Hodgkin's translation.]

[Footnote 2: Thirty-two years and a half from the death of Odoacer;
thirty-seven from his descent into Italy.]

"He gave one of his daughters in marriage to the king of the Visigoths
in Gaul, another to the son of the Burgundian king; his sister to the
king of the Vandals and his niece to the king of the Thuringians. Thus
he pleased all the nations round him, for he was a lover of
manufactures and a great restorer of cities. He restored the Aqueduct
of Ravenna which Trajan had built, and again after a long interval
brought water into the city. He completed but did not dedicate the
Palace, and he finished the Porticoes about it. At Verona he erected
Baths and a Palace, and constructed a Portico from the Gate to the
Palace. The Aqueduct, which had been destroyed long since, he renewed,
and brought in water through it. He also surrounded the city with new
walls. At Ticinum (Pavia) too he built a Palace, Baths, and an
Amphitheatre and erected walls round the city. On many other cities he
bestowed similar benefits.

"Thus he so delighted the nations near him that they entered into a
league with him hoping that he would be their king. The merchants,
too, from many provinces flocked to his dominions, for so great was
the order which he maintained, that, if any one wished to keep gold
and silver in the country it was as safe as in a walled city. A proof
of this was that he never made gates for any city of Italy, and the
gates that already existed were never closed. Any one who had business
to do, might go about it as safely by night as by day."

But if such praise sound fulsome, let us hear what the sceptical and
censorious Procopius has to say:

"Theodoric," he tells us, "was an extraordinary lover of justice and
adhered vigorously to the laws. He guarded the country from barbarian
invasions, and displayed the greatest intelligence and prudence. There
was in his government scarcely a trace of injustice towards his
subjects, nor would he permit any of those under him to attempt
anything of the kind except that the Goths divided among themselves
the same proportion of the land of Italy as Odoacer had given to his
confederates. Thus then Theodoric was in name a tyrant, in fact a true
king, not inferior to the best of his predecessors, and his popularity
increased greatly both wi