of strict religious tolerance toward the orthodox Christians in their realm. When Justinian ordered his generals to take the field against them, the Goths sued for peace again and again with offers of tribute and perpetual vassaldom. But the bigoted Justinian was adamant. Theodora, his beautiful, influential, and much wiser spouse, might have prevailed upon him to call off his generals, as she frequently did on other occasions, but for reasons of State she was more interested in protecting a different variety of heresy. The Goths were ultimately exterminated root and branch. “It was a profound error to destroy them. Had they been left in peace there might have been no Lombard invasions, no papal state, no revival of the Empire in the West, and the political unity which Italy so painfully achieved in the reign of Queen Victoria might have been realized in the reign of Ethelbert.”[1]
Whether this event should be called an “error” depends, of course, on one’s religious predilections. Those who accept the theology of the Council of Nicea call Justinian’s crusade a blessing. But error or blessing, the act was fateful for the history of Europe. ••••• At this point it is necessary to consider the relation between the hero and social interests. For one way of losing sight of the problem is to show that heroic action fits into the needs of a class already in power or of a class that comes into power after his work is done. Such an analysis, even when it is true, does not rule out the possibility that the class that remains in power and the class that comes to power do so in virtue of the unique qualities of the hero who serves their interests. But very often it is assumed that this possibility has been ruled out when all that has been established is that the hero must take note of social interests and find support among them.
The event-making figure in history obviously can achieve nothing by himself alone. He is dependent upon a narrow group of lieutenants or assistants who constitute a “machine,” and upon a much broader group in the population whom we may call a social class. Both groups are tied to him by bonds of interest, but the nature of the interests is different. An over-simplified conception of the role of interests often presents the event-making figure as their servant, selected because of his
- ↑ Fisher, op. cit., vol. I., p. 131.
