Res Gestae

Shortly after that the devil found an opportunity to steal for his own a man who was ruling the state well and without complaint. For presently Theodoric gave orders that an oratory of St. Stephen, that is, a high altar, beside the springs in a suburb of the city of Verona, should be destroyed. He also forbade any Roman to carry arms, except a small pen-knife.

Also a poor woman of the Gothic race, lying in a colonnade not far from the palace at Ravenna, gave birth to four snakes; two of these in the sight of the people were carried up on clouds from west to east and then fell into the sea; the two others, which had but a single head, were taken away. A star with a train of fire appeared, of the kind called a comet,[*](See Amm. xxv. 10, 2 ff.) and shone for fifteen days. There were frequent earthquakes.

After this the king began from time to time, when he found an opportunity, to vent his rage upon the Romans. Cyprianus, who was then a referee,[*](See Index II, Vol. I.) afterwards count of the privy purse and a master,[*](Perhaps magister mititm. ) was led by avarice to make a charge against the patrician Albinus, to the effect that he had sent to the emperor Justinus a letter hostile to Theodoric’s rule. When Albinus was summoned

Then Cyprianus, after some hesitation, produced false witnesses, not only against Albinus, but against his defender Boethius. Moreover, the king was plotting evil against the Romans and seeking an opportunity for killing them; hence he trusted the false witnesses rather than the senators.

Then Albinus and Boethius were imprisoned in the baptistery of a church. And the king summoned Eusebius, prefect of the city, to Ticinum, and pronounced sentence on Boethius without giving him a hearing. Presently at the Calventian estate,[*](Apparently named from an otherwise unrecorded CCalventius, modern Calvenzeno.) where Boethius was confined,[*](The sentence of death had been changed to exile.) he had him put to a wretched death. He was tortured for a long time with a cord bound about his forehead so tightly that his eyes cracked in their sockets, and finally, while under torture, he was beaten to death with a cudgel.

Then the king, on his return to Ravenna, acted no longer as a friend of God, but as an enemy to His law; forgetful of all His kindness and of the favour which He had shown him, trusting to his own arm, believing, too, that the emperor Justinus stood in great fear of him, he sent and summoned to Ravenna Johannes,[*](The first Roman pope of that name, successor to Hormisdas.) who at that time sat upon the apostolic throne, and said to him: Go to the emperor Justinus in Constantinople, and tell him

To him the Pope Johannes replied: What you will do, O king, do quickly. Lo! here I stand before you. But this thing I will not promise you to do, nor will I give the emperor your command. But anything else which you may enjoin upon me with God’s help I shall be able to obtain from him.

Thereupon the king in anger gave orders that a ship should be built, and that Johannes should be embarked on it with the other bishops; that is, Ecclesius of Ravenna, Eusebius of Fanum Fortunae,[*](On the Metaurus river, in Umbria; cf. Tac., Hist. iii. 50. Also called Fanum, Caes., B.C. i. 11, 4 (modern Fano) and Colonia Julia Fanestris; cf. Mela, ii. 4, 64; Dessau, Inscrr. 6651, 6652; C.I.L. xi, 6238, 6240.) Sabinus of Campania, and two others; and with them the senators Theodorus, Importunus, and Agapitus, with another Agapitus. But God, who does not desert his faithful worshippers, conducted them in safety.

The emperor Justinus received the Roman bishop on his arrival as he would have received Saint Peter, gave him audience, and promised that he would do everything that was asked, except that those who had become reconciled and returned to the Catholic faith could by no means be restored to the Arians.[*](See note 1.)

But while all this was going on, Symmachus, the head of the senate, whose daughter Boethius had married, was brought from Rome to Ravenna. There the king, fearing that through resentment at the death of his son-in-law,[*](Boethius; see 85–87, above.) Symmachus might take some step in opposition to his rule, ordered him

Then Pope Johannes returned from Justinus; Theodoric received him in a hostile spirit, and ordered him to be deemed as one of his enemies; a few days later Johannes died. When the people were marching before his dead body, suddenly one of the crowd was possessed by a devil and fell down; but when they had come, with the coffin in which Johannes was carried, to the place where the stricken man lay, he suddenly got up sound and well and took his place in the front of the funeral procession. When the people and the senators beheld this, they began to take relics[*](Cf. Amm. xxii. 11, 10.) from the Pope’s garments. Then the body was escorted out of the city attended by the great rejoicing of the people.

Then Symmachus, an advocate[*](At this time called scholasticus. ) and a Jew, at the order of a tyrant rather than a king, announced on an appointed day, which was a Wednesday, the 26th of August, in the fourth indiction,[*](When the price of grain at Rome seemed likely to rise too high, contributions of grain were demanded of the provinces in addition to the regular tribute. These were called annonae (Dig. xxvi. 7, 32, 6), indictiones temporariae (Dig. xxxiii. 2, 28) or indictiones (Pliny, Paneg. 29). Their scope was extended in the fourth century and regulated by a census of 289. Diocletian made them annual, and after 297 held a new census, to be repeated every five years, and combined every three census-periods into a fifteen-year cycle, counting the years from one to fifteen and then beginning again. This arrangement was wrongly said to have begun in 312, for papyrus receipts show that the cycle began in 297—298, coinciding with Diocletian’s stay in Egypt, when he personally conducted the siege of Alexandria, which ended early in 297 (Eutr. ix. 23). The fifteen-year cycle probably had some connection with Egypt. Augustus, or at latest Tiberius, established a rating there every fourteen years, because the fourteenth year was the end of puberty and the beginning of liability to taxation. The system was extended from Egypt to other provinces before the middle of the fourth century. In Italy the cycle began on September 1st (Ambros. Noë et area 17, 60, Migne, 14, 390, a Septembri mense annus videatur incipere, sicut indictionum praesentium usus ostendit). An inscr. of 552 gives August 11th as in fine ind(ictionis) xv., De Rossi, Inscr. Christ. urbis Romae, I. 979; and it was the same for the greater part (if not the whole) of the empire. September 1st was chosen as nearest to the beginning of the month in Egypt (Aug. 29). The indictiones were used as a means of dating in 307, at first in Egypt. In other provinces first in 359. In Italy first about 380 (Seeck in Pauly-Wiss., ix. (1916), 1327 ff.) under the consulship of Olybrius,[*](See 11, 54, note 3.) that

But He who does not allow his faithful worshippers to be oppressed by unbelievers soon brought upon Theodoric the same punishment that Arius, the founder of his religion, had suffered; for the king was seized with a diarrhea, and after three days of open bowels lost both his throne and his life on the very same day on which he rejoiced to attack the churches.[*](A.D. 526.)

But before breathing his last he named his grandson Athalaric as his successor. During his lifetime he had made himself a mausoleum[*](This is still in existence at Ravenna, although stripped of its external decorations.) of squared blocks of stone, a work of extraordinary size, and sought out a huge rock to place upon it.