Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/233

Chaf. xxxixj OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 199 country, and sailed back to the Hellespont, proud of their piratical victory over a people whom they still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren. 50 Their retreat was possibly hastened by the activity of Theodoric ; Italy was covered by a fleet of a thousand light vessels, 56 which he constructed with incredible dispatch ; and his firm moderation was soon rewarded by a solid and honourable peace. He maintained with a power- ful hand the balance of the West, till it was at length over- thrown 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 checked the Franks in the midst of their victorious career. I am notu.D. 511] desirous to prolong or repeat 5T this narrative of military events, the least interesting of the reign of Theodoric ; and shall be con- tent to add that the Alemanni were protected, 58 that an inroad [a.d. 504?] of the Burgundians was severely chastised, and that the con- quest of Aries 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 prefecture of the Gauls, reformed some abuses in the civil government of Spain, and accepted the annual tribute and 55 1 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 Italise littora processerunt, et usque ad Tarentum antiquissimam civitatem aggressi sunt ; remensoque mari inhonestam victoriam quam piratico ausu Romani ex Romanis rapuerunt, Anastasio Caesari reportarunt (in Chron. p. 48). See Variar. i. 16, ii. 38. r ' 6 See 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. [Theodoric did not decide on the establishment of a navy till the last years of his reign. The letters of Cassiodorus bearing on this, v. 16-20, belong to the years a.d. 523-6. Cp. Mommsen's ed., Procemium, p. xxxvi.] 57 Above, p. 122-127. 58 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 Procem. to his ed. of Cassiodorus, p. xxxiii.). In any case the date was not (as Vogel tried to prove, Sybel's Hist. Zeitsehrift, 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.]