surrendered, only to be treacherously slain a few days later by Theodoric's own hand (493).1

The attitude of the East Goths toward the people already in possession of the land and toward the Roman culture is significant. Theodoric put the name of the eastern emperor on the coins that he issued and did everything in his power to insure the emperor's approval of the new German kingdom.

The East Italy.

Goths in

Interior of a Church at Ravenna, built in Theodoric's Time Nevertheless, although he desired that the emperor should sanction his usurpation, Theodoric had no idea of being really subordinate to Constantinople.

The invaders appropriated one third of the land for themselves, but this was done with discretion and no disorder appears to have resulted. Theodoric maintained the Roman laws and institutions, which he greatly admired. The old offices and titles were retained, and Goth and Roman lived

1 Reference, Oman, Dark Ages, Chapter II.

The East Goths were Arian heretics.

The German kingdoms of Theodoric's time.

under the same Roman law. Order was restored and learning encouraged. In Ravenna, which Theodoric chose for his capital, beautiful buildings that date from his reign still exist. On his death in 526, Theodoric left behind him an admirably organized state, but it had one conspicuous weakness. The Goths, although Christians, were unorthodox according to the standard of the Italian Christians. They had been converted by eastern missionaries, who taught them the Arian heresy earlier prevalent at Constantinople. This doctrine, which derived its name from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria (d. 336), had been condemned by the Council of Nicæa. The followers of Arius did not have the same conception of Christ's nature and of the relations of the three members of the Trinity as that sanctioned at Rome. The East Goths were, therefore, not only barbarians, which might have been forgiven them, but were guilty, in the eyes of the orthodox Italians, of the unpardonable offense of heresy. Theodoric himself was exceptionally tolerant for his times. His conviction that "we cannot command in matters of religion because no one can be compelled to believe against his will,” showed a spirit alien to the traditions of the Roman Empire and the Roman Church, which represented the orthodox belief.

-

II. While Theodoric had been establishing his kingdom in Italy with such enlightenment and moderation, what is now France was coming under the control of the most powerful of the barbarian peoples, the Franks, who were to play a more important rôle in the formation of modern Europe than any of the other German races. Besides the kingdoms of the East Goths and the Franks, the West Goths had their kingdom in Spain, the Burgundians had established themselves on the Rhone, and the Vandals in Africa. Royal alliances were concluded between the reigning houses of these nations, and for the first time in the history of Europe we see something like a family of nations, living each within its own boundaries and

dealing with one another as independent powers. It seemed for a few years as if the process of assimilation between Germans and Romans was going to make rapid progress without involving any considerable period of disorder and retrogression.

of Latin

But no such good fortune was in store for Europe, which Extinction was now only at the beginning of the turmoil from which it literature. was to emerge almost completely barbarized. Science, art, and literature could find no foothold in the shifting political sands of the following centuries. Boethius, whom Theodoric put Boethius. to death (in 524 or 525) for alleged treasonable correspondence

1 See above, p. 19.

Cassiodorus and his manuals.

Scarcely any

writers in western

Europe during the sixth,

seventh, and eighth centuries.

with the emperor, was the last Latin writer who can be compared in any way with the classical authors in his style and mastery of the language. He was a scholar as well as a poet, and his treatises on logic, music, etc., were highly esteemed by following generations.

Theodoric's distinguished Roman counselor, Cassiodorus (d. 575), to whose letters we owe a great part of our knowledge of the period, busied himself in his old age in preparing textbooks of the liberal arts and sciences, grammar, arithmetic, logic, geometry, rhetoric, music, and astronomy. His manuals. were intended to give the uninstructed priests a sufficient preparation for the study of the Bible and of the doctrines of the Church. His absurdly inadequate and, to us, silly treatment of these seven important subjects, to which he devotes a few pages each, enables us to estimate the low plane to which learning had fallen in Italy in the sixth century. Yet his books were regarded as standard treatises in these great fields of knowledge all through the Middle Ages. So mediæval Europe owed these, and other text-books upon which she was dependent for her knowledge, to the period when Latin culture was coming to an end.

A long period of gloom now begins. Between the time of Theodoric and that of Charlemagne three hundred years elapsed, during which scarcely a writer was to be found who could compose, even in the worst of Latin, a chronicle of the events of his day. Everything conspired to discourage education. The great centers of learning - Carthage, Rome, Alexandria, Milan - were partially destroyed by the barbarians or the Arabs. The libraries which had been kept in the temples of the gods were often annihilated, along with the pagan shrines, by Christian enthusiasts, who were not sorry to see the heathen literature disappear with the heathen religion. Shortly after Theodoric's death the eastern emperor withdrew the support

1 See Readings, Chapter III (end), for historical writings of this period.

which the government had hitherto granted to public teachers and closed the great school at Athens. The only important historian of the sixth century was the half-illiterate Gregory, Bishop of Tours (d. 594), whose whole work is unimpeachable evidence of the sad state of intellectual affairs. He at least heartily appreciated his own ignorance and exclaims, in incorrect Latin, "Woe to our time, for the study of letters has perished from among us."

12. The year after Theodoric's death one of the greatest of the emperors of the East, Justinian (527–565), came to the throne at Constantinople.1 He undertook to regain for the Empire the provinces in Africa and Italy that had been occupied by the Vandals and East Goths. His general, Belisarius, overthrew the Vandal kingdom in northern Africa in 534, but it was a more difficult task to destroy the Gothic rule in Italy. However, in spite of a brave defense, the Goths were so completely defeated in 553 that they agreed to leave Italy with all their movable possessions. What became of the remnants of the race we do not know. They had been too few to maintain their control over the mass of the Italians, who were ready, with a religious zeal which cost them dear, to open their gates to the hostile armies of Justinian.

The destruction of the Gothic kingdom was a disaster for Italy. Immediately after the death of Justinian the country was overrun anew, by the Lombards, the last of the great German peoples to establish themselves within the bounds of the former Empire. They were a savage race, a considerable part of which was still pagan, and the Arian Christians among them appear to have been as hostile to the Roman Church as their unconverted fellows. The newcomers first occupied the region north of the Po, which has ever since been called Lombardy after them, and then extended their conquests southward.

1 For Justinian, who scarcely comes into our story, see Oman, Dark Ages, Chapters V-VI.