186
THE DECLINE AND FALL
whom they still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren.[1] Their retreat was possibly hastened by the activity of Theodoric; Italy was covered by a fleet of a thousand light vessels,[2] which he constructed with incredible dispatch; and his firm moderation was soon rewarded by a solid and honourable peace. He maintained with a powerful hand the balance of the West, till it was at length overthrown by the ambition of Clovis; and, although unable to assist his rash and unfortunate kinsman the king of the Visigoths, he saved the remains of his family and people, and [A.D. 511] checked the Franks in the midst of their victorious career. I am not desirous to prolong or repeat[3] this narrative of military events, the least interesting of the reign of Theodoric; and shall be content to add that the Alemanni were protected,[4] that [A.D. 504?] an inroad of the Burgundians was severely chastised, and that the conquest of Arles and Marseilles opened a free communication with the Visigoths, who revered him both as their national protector and as the guardian of his grandchild, the infant son of Alaric. Under this respectable character, the king of Italy restored the praetorian præfecture of the Gauls, reformed some abuses in the civil government of Spain, and accepted the annual tribute and apparent submission of its military governor, who wisely refused to trust his person in the palace of Ravenna.[5] The Gothic sovereignty was established
- ↑ I cannot forbear transcribing the liberal and classic style of Count Marcellinus: Romanus comes domesticorum et Rusticus comes scholariorum cum centum armatis navibus, totidemque dromonibus, octo millia militum armatorum secum ferentibus, ad devastanda Italiæ littora processerunt, et usque ad Tarentum antiquissimam civitatem aggressi sunt; remensoque mari inhonestam victoriam quam piratico ausu Romani ex Romanis rapuerunt, Anastasio Cæsari reportarunt (in Chron. p. 48). See Variar. i. 16, ii. 38.
- ↑ 5See the royal orders and instructions (Var. iv. 15; v. 16-20). These armed boats should be still smaller than the thousand vessels of Agamemnon at the siege of Troy.6
- ↑ Above, p. 113-118.
- ↑ Ennodius (p. 1610 [p. 212, ed. Vog.]) and Cassiodorius, in the royal name (Var. ii. 41), record his salutary protection of the Alemanni. [Compare Agathias, i. 6. The victory of the Franks over the Alamanni and the reception of Alamanni into the realm of Theodoric must be kept altogether apart chronologically, as von Schubert showed (Die Unterwerfung der Alamannen unter die Franken, 1884). The date for the former event, given in Gregory of Tours, 2, 30 (whether due to Gregory himself or an adscript by some one else), is A.D. 495, and Mommsen is inclined to accept it (see Proœm. to his ed. of Cassiodorus, p. xxxiii.). In any case the date was not (as Vogel tried to prove, Sybel's Hist. Zeitschrift, 1886, Bd. 56, 385, sqq.) subsequent to A.D. 500. But the reception of the Alamans was subsequent to the Sirmian expedition (see below) of A.D. 504. Probably, as Mommsen suggests, Theodoric assigned abodes in Pannonia to the Alaman fugitives who had been wandering about homeless since A.D. 495.]
- ↑ The Gothic transactions in Gaul and Spain are represented with some perplexity in Cassiodorius (Var. iii. 32, 38, 41, 43, 44; v. 39), Jornandes (c. 58, p. (398,
