Theodoric the Goth | Page 8

of the fifth century after Christ, he
descended into Italy, and though at first successful only in ravage, in
the second invasion he penetrated to the very heart of the Empire. His
three sieges of Rome, ending in the awful event of the capture and sack
of the Eternal City in 410, are events in the history of the world with
which every student is familiar. Only it may be remarked that the word
awful, which is here used designedly, is not meant to imply that the loss
of life was unusually large or the cruelty of the captors outrageous; in
both respects Alaric and his Goths would compare favourably with
some generals and some armies making much higher pretensions to
civilisation. Nor is it meant that the destruction of the public buildings
of the city was extensive. There can be little doubt that Paris, on the
day after the suppression of the "Commune" in 1871, presented a far
greater appearance of desolation and ruin than Rome in 410, when she
lay trembling in the hand of Alaric. But the bare fact that Rome herself,
the Roma Æterna, the Roma Invicta of a thousand coins of a hundred
Emperors,--Rome, whose name for centuries on the shores of the
Mediterranean had been synonymous with worldwide
dominion,--should herself be taken, sacked, dishonoured by the
presence of a flaxen-haired barbarian conqueror from the North, was
one of those events apparently so contrary to the very course of Nature
itself, that the nations which heard the tidings, many of them old and
bitter enemies of Rome, now her subjects and her friends, held their
breath with awe at the terrible recital.
[Footnote 8: Probably. Some historians put the date in 382, others in
400.]
Alaric died shortly after his sack of Rome, and after a few years of

aimless fighting his nation quitted Italy, disappearing over the
north-western Alpine boundary to win for themselves new settlements
by the banks of the Garonne and the Ebro. Their leader was that
Ataulfus whose truly statesmanlike reflections on the unwisdom of
destroying the Roman Empire and the necessity of incorporating the
barbarians with its polity have been already quoted. There, in the
south-western corner of Gaul and the northern regions of Spain, we
must for the present leave the Western branch of the great Gothic
nationality, while our narrative returns to its Eastern representatives.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
THE MIGHT OF ATTILA.
The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila king
of the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at
Gaul--Battle of the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction
of Aquileia--Death of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement
of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia.
For eighty years the power of the Ostrogoths suffered eclipse under the
shadow of Hunnish barbarism. As to this period we have little historical
information that is of any value. We hear of resistance to the Hunnish
supremacy vainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. The son and the
grandson of Hermanric figure as the shadowy heroes of this vain
resistance. After the death of the latter (King Thorismund) a strange
story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years,
during all which time they refused to elect any other king to replace
him whom they had lost. There can be little doubt that this legend veils
the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed and dispirited under the yoke
of the conquering Huns, had not energy or patriotism enough to choose
a king; since almost invariably among the Teutons of that age, kingship
and national unity flourished or faded together.

At length, towards the middle of the fifth century after Christ, the
darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the Ostrogothic nation
owning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung from the Amal race,
but not direct descendants of Hermanric, whose names are Walamir,
Theudemir, and Widemir. "Beautiful it was", says the Gothic historian,
"to behold the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the
admirable Theudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of
Walamir; when Walamir adorned him with the crown at the same time
that he conveyed to him his orders; when Widemir gladly rendered his
services to both of his brothers".[9] Theudemir, the second in this royal
brotherhood, was the father of our hero, Theodoric.
[Footnote 9: This is a partly paraphrastic and conjectural translation of
a very obscure sentence of Jordanes.]
The three Ostrogothic brethren, kings towards their own countrymen,
were subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-ruling king
of the Huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by
whom the conquering tribe had been first led into Europe, but ATTILA,
a name of fear to his contemporaries and long remembered in the
Roman world. He, with his brother Bleda, mounted the barbarian
throne in the year