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322 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap.xli enjoyed only a short time the charms of Amalasontha, and the hopes of the succession ; and his widow, after the death of her husband and father, was left the guardian of her son Athalaric, and the kingdom of Italy. At the age of about twenty-eight years, the endowments of her mind and person had attained their perfect maturity. Her beauty, which, in the apprehen- sion of Theodora herself, might have disputed the conquest of an emperor, was animated by manly sense, activity, and re- solution. Education and experience had cultivated her talents ; her philosophic studies were exempt from vanity ; and, though she expressed herself with equal elegance and ease in the Greek, the Latin, and the Gothic tongue, the daughter of Theodoric maintained in her counsels a discreet and impenetrable silence. By a faithful imitation of the virtues, she revived the prosperity of Ms reign; while she strove, with pious care, to expiate the faults, and to obliterate the darker memory, of his declining age. The children of Boethius and Symmachus were restored to their paternal inheritance ; her extreme lenity never con- sented to inflict any corporal or pecuniary penalties on her Roman subjects; and she generously despised the clamours of the Goths, who at the end of forty years still considered the people of Italy as their slaves or their enemies. Her salutary measures were directed by the wisdom, and celebrated by the eloquence, of Cassiodorius ; she solicited and deserved the friend- ship of the emperor; and the kingdoms of Europe respected, both in peace and war, the majesty of the Gothic throne. But the future happiness of the queen and of Italy depended on the education of her son, who was destined, by his birth, to support the different and almost incompatible characters of the chief of a Barbarian camp and the first magistrate of a civilized nation. From the age of ten years, 62 Athalaric was diligently instructed in the arts and sciences, either useful or ornamental, for a Roman prince ; and three venerable Goths were chosen to instil the principles of honour and virtue into the mind of their young king. But the pupil who is insensible of the benefits, must abhor the restraints, of education ; and the solicitude of the queen, which affection rendered anxious and severe, offended 62 At the death of Theodoric, his grandson Athalaric is described by Procopius as a boy about eight years old — oktw ytyovoos trr]. Cassiodorius, with authority and reason, adds two years to his age — infantulum adhuc vix decennem.