Page:The origin and deeds of the Goths in English version.djvu/115

 and chieftains of his race and appointed Athalaric as king. He was a boy scarce ten years old, the son of his daughter Amalasuentha, and he had lost his father Eutharic. As though uttering his last will and testament, Theodoric adjured and commanded them to honor their king, to love the Senate and Roman People and to make sure of the peace and good will of the Emperor of the East, as next after God.

[Sidenote: AMALASUENTHA]

[Sidenote: Theodahad 534-536]

[Sidenote: 534]

They kept this command fully so long as Athalaric 305 their king and his mother lived, and ruled in peace for almost eight years. But as the Franks put no confidence in the rule of a child and furthermore held him in contempt, and were also plotting war, he gave back to them those parts of Gaul which his father and grandfather had seized. He possessed all the rest in peace and quiet. Therefore when Athalaric was approaching the age of manhood, he entrusted to the Emperor of the East both his own youth and his mother's widowhood. But in a short time the ill-fated boy was carried off by an untimely death and departed from earthly affairs. His mother 306 feared she might be despised by the Goths on account of the weakness of her sex. So after much thought she decided, for the sake of relationship, to summon her cousin Theodahad from Tuscany, where he led a retired life at home, and thus she established him on the throne. But he was unmindful of their kinship and, after a little time, had her taken from the palace at Ravenna to an island of the Bulsinian lake where he kept her in exile. After spending a very few days there in sorrow, she was strangled in the bath by his hirelings.

[Sidenote: Justinian 527-565]

[Sidenote: JUSTINIAN SENDS BELISARIUS TO AVENGE THE DEATH OF HIS WARDS 534]

[Sidenote: Vitiges King 536-540]

LX When Justinian, the Emperor of the East, heard 307 this, he was aroused as if he had suffered personal injury in the death of his wards. Now at that time he had won