Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/196

 Emperor replied with congratulations, and returned to Theodoric the Imperial insignia which had been sequestered at Constantinople. The reign of the Gothic king lasted for thirty-three years, and was characterized by beneficence and religious toleration towards his Roman subjects. His court was upheld politically by the most eminent men of Latin race whom the West produced in his time. He retained, as his chief ministers, Boethius and Cassiodorus, men of literary attainments, whose works have come down to us and are still read for pleasure and instruction. But in his last days the alien king became distrustful of his officials of native lineage, and Boethius, with his father-in-law, Symmachus, fell a victim to his morbid suspicions.

Theodoric was succeeded by his grandson Athalaric, the son of his daughter Amalasuntha, a boy only ten years of age. The mother, a beautiful and accomplished woman, became queen-regent; but she soon incurred the enmity of a powerful section of the Gothic nobles by educating her son according to the scholastic discipline usual among civilized nations. They insisted that the use of arms was the only fit training for a Gothic youth, asserting that "the boy who had trembled beneath a rod would never endure