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The captivity of his sister was not the only sorrow which clouded the last few years of Theodoric’s long life. He was left in some trouble as to the succession to his crown. He had married his only legitimate child, Amalaswintha, to a Visigothic prince named Eutharic, of whose prudence and valour much was expected. Theodoric intended him to reign with his daughter as colleague and king-consort, but in 522 Eutharic died, leaving as his heir a boy of only five years of age. Theodoric could not but see that on his death the accession of a woman and a child to the throne would be fraught with the gravest danger, more especially as his nephew Theodahat, the nearest male heir of the Amal house, was known to be an unscrupulous intriguer.

It was perhaps owing to a temper embittered by these family troubles that Theodoric was led, during the last few years of his life, into an unhappy quarrel with some of the best of his Italian subjects. Rightly or wrongly, he had imbibed a notion that the Italians would take advantage of his death to stir up the emperor at Constantinople against his infant heir. The idea was very justifiable; for, in spite of all Theodoric’s wisdom and goodness, most of his Roman subjects never learnt to look kindly upon a ruler who was at once an Arian and a Goth, and it seems that some, at least, of the Senate were secretly corresponding with the emperor Justin. That monarch, the first Eastern Emperor for fifty years who was undisputedly orthodox, had fired the enthusiasm of Catholics all over the world by his attempts to suppress Arianism, and the faithful in Italy were undoubtedly contrasting his action with the strict impartiality of Theodoric, to the latter’s disadvantage. |The Misfortunes of Boethius.| In 524 the patrician Albinus was accused by Cyprian, the magister officiorum, of sending disloyal letters to Constantinople. At his trial he was defended by the Consular Boethius, at once a great official and the best-known author of the day, noted as philosopher, theologian, astronomer, and mechanist—in short, the chief representative of the intellect of Italy. Boethius resented the impeachment of Albinus in the most fiery terms. ‘If this man is guilty,’ he cried, ‘then both I and all the Senate are guilty too.’ The accuser, Cyprian, proceeded to take him at his word, and brought forward further evidence to prove that Boethius himself had been one of the senators in correspondence with Justin, or had, at least, done his best to suppress evidence against those who actually were so engaged.^[3] Such an accusation, even if not fully proved, seems to have fired the anger of the old king. He could not tolerate disloyalty in a man whom he had always distinguished by his favour, and preferred to the highest offices. By his orders Boethius was put on his trial before the Senate, and there condemned. For a year Theodoric kept him in prison—a year invaluable to future ages, for in it the captive composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a work which was to be the comfort of many a noble but unhappy soul in the Middle Ages, and to find countless readers from King Alfred down to Sir Thomas More. At the end of a year’s confinement Boethius was tortured and put to death. Possibly he was altogether innocent of the charge laid to his account, that of secret correspondence with Constantinople; but more probably he had actually written harmless letters into which a treasonable purpose was read by the malice of his accusers and the fears of the king.