Res Gestae

A certain man died, leaving a wife and a little son who did not know his mother. Her son, when a small boy, was taken from her by some one, carried to another province, and there brought up. When he became a youth, he somehow returned to his mother, who had now become betrothed to another man. When the mother saw her son, she embraced him, thanking God that she had seen her son again, and he lived with her for a month. And behold! the mother’s betrothed came, and seeing the young man, asked who he was. She replied that he was her son. But when her betrothed learned that the youth was her son, he began to ask the return of the earnest-money[*](As his part of the agreement of betrothal; arra is derived from a Hebrew word.) and to say: Either deny that he is your son, or I certainly depart hence. The mother yielded to her betrothed and began to deny her son, whom she herself had before acknowledged, saying: Leave my house, young man, since I took you up as a stranger. But he kept saying that he had come back to his mother and to the house of his father. To make a long story short, while this was going on the son appealed against his mother to the king, who ordered her to appear before him. And he said to her: Woman, your son appeals against you; what have you to say? Is he your son, or not? She replied: He is not my son, but I

Afterwards Theodoric took to wife[*](accepta uxore is perhaps an example of the participle as a finite verb.) a Frankish woman named Augoflada. For before he began to reign he had a wife,[*](Her name was Ermenberga.) who had borne him daughters. One of these, called Areaagni, he gave in marriage in Gaul to Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and another daughter of his, Theodegotha, to Sigismund, son of King Gundebadus.[*](Jordanes mentions two natural daughters, Theudigotha and Ostrogotha, who also were married.)

Theodoric, through Festus, made peace with the emperor Anastasius with regard to his assumption of the rule, and Anastasius sent back to him all the ornaments of the Palace, which Odoacar had transferred to Constantinople.

At that same time a dispute arose in the city of Rome between Symmachus and Laurentius;[*](About the bishopric.) for both had been consecrated. But through God’s ordinance Symmachus, who also deserved it, got the upper hand. After peace was made in the city of the Church, King Theodoric went to Rome[*](In the year 500.) and met Saint Peter with as much reverence as if he

Then coming to Rome and entering it, he appeared in the senate, and addressed the people at The Palm,[*](A name apparently used from the fifth or sixth century for the area at Rome lying between the Curia and the arch of Septimius Severus; undoubtedly the same as the Palma Aurea of Fulgentius, Acta S. Fulgenti, in Acta Sanctorum, i. p. 37, ch. 13, Jan.) promising that with God’s help he would keep inviolate whatever the former Roman emperors had decreed.

In celebration of his tricennalia[*](Theodoric was in the eighth year of his reign and the Decennalia were sometimes celebrated ahead of time. Hadr. Valesius proposed to read decennalem for tricennalem. ) he entered the Palace in a triumphal procession for the entertainment of the people, and exhibited games in the Circus for the Romans. To the Roman people and to the poor of the city he gave each year a hundred and twenty thousand measures of grain, and for the restoration of the Palace and[*](seu perhaps = et; see note 1.) the rebuilding of the walls of the city he ordered two hundred pounds to be given each year from the chest that contained the tax on wine.

He also gave his own sister Amalafrigda in marriage to Transimundus, king of the Vandals. Liberius, whom he had appointed praetorian prefect at the beginning of his reign, he made a patrician, and appointed for him a successor.[*](A promotion; see § 36, note 6.) Now his successor in the administration of the prefecture was Theodorus, son of Basilus. Odoin, his general, made a plot against the king.

When Theodoric learned of it, he had Odoin beheaded in the palace which is called the Sessorium.[*](A building of unknown origin, situated at the extreme south-east of the Fifth Region, adjoining the Amphitheatrum Castrense. After the part outside the Aurelian wall was destroyed, the extensive inner section became an imperial residence by the beginning of the fourth century, and Helena, the mother of Constantine, lived there.)

Then returning to Ravenna, five months later, he gave Amalabirga, another sister of his,[*](Others call her his niece.) in marriage to Herminifred, king of the Turingi, and in that way gained peace with all the nations round about. He was besides a lover of building and restorer of cities.

At Ravenna he repaired the aqueduct which the emperor Trajan had constructed, and thus brought water into the city after a long time. He completely finished the palace, but did not dedicate it. He completed the colonnades around the palace. He also built baths and a palace at Verona, and added a colonnade extending all the way from the gate to the Palace; besides that, he restored the aqueduct at Verona, which had long since been destroyed, and brought water into the city, as well as[*](For this use of alius see Class. Phil. xxiii. (1928), pp. 60 ff., and for its use in Ammianus, Amer. Jour. of Phil. lvii. (1936), pp. 137 ff.) surrounding[*](circuit, late Latin for circumdedit. ) the city with new walls. Also at Ticinum[*](Modern Pavia.) he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, besides[*](See note 2.) new city walls.

He also showed many favours to the other cities. And he so won the good-will of the neighbouring nations, that they offered to make treaties with him, in the hope that he would be their king. Indeed, merchants flocked to him from the various provinces, for his organization was such that if anyone

And he followed this principle so fully throughout all Italy, that he gave no city a gate; and where there were already gates, they were never shut; and every one could carry on his business at whatever hour he chose, as if it were in daylight. In his time sixty measures of wheat were bought for a single gold-piece,[*](Cf. 11, 53.) and thirty amphorae of wine for the same price.

Now at that same time the emperor Anastasius had three grandsons, namely, Pompeius, Probus, and Hypatius. Considering which one of them he should make his successor, he invited them to have luncheon with him one day, and after luncheon to take their midday siesta within the palace, where he had a couch prepared for each of them. Under the pillow on one couch he ordered the symbol of royalty to be put, and decided that whichever of them chose that couch for his nap, in him he ought to recognise the one to whom he should later turn over the rule. One of the grandsons threw himself down on one couch, but the other two, from brotherly affection, took their places together on another, and so it happened that none of them slept on the couch where the emblem of royalty had been placed.

When Anastasius saw this, he began to ponder, and learning from it that none of them should rule, he began to pray to God that He would show him a sign, so that while he still lived he might know who should receive the royal power after his death. While he was considering the question with fasting and

Now it chanced that Justinus, who was commander of the watch, on coming to a place whither he had been directed to go[*](Or: arriving when he had been summoned . . .) by the emperor, was the first to be announced to him by his head-chamberlain. And when the king knew this, he began to thank God for having deigned to reveal to him who his successor should be.

These words[*](Of the man seen in his dream, see § 75.) he kept to himself, but one day, when the emperor was in a procession, and Justinus wished to pass along quickly on one side of the emperor, in order to put his followers in line, he trod on the emperor’s cloak.

But the emperor only said to him: What is your hurry?[*](Thus implying that Justinus would succeed him.) Then in the last days of his reign the devil tempted him, wishing him to follow the Eunomian sect;[*](The followers of Eunomius, a native of Cappadocia (died about 392). He became Bishop of Cyzicus, and was an extreme Arian.) but the people of the faith checked him and even cried out to him in the church: You shall not hurl your puny lance against the Trinity. Not long afterwards Anastasius was taken ill and confined to his bed in the city of Constantinople, and ended his last day.

Now King Theodoric was without training in letters, and of such dull comprehension that for ten years of his reign he had been wholly unable to learn the four letters necessary for endorsing his edicts. For that reason he had a golden plate with

Then Theodoric made Eutharicus[*](He was the king’s son-in-law, husband of Amalasuntha.) consul and celebrated triumphs at Rome and at Ravenna. This Eutharicus was an excessively rough man, and an enemy to the Catholic faith.