Читать книгу The Dark Ages, 476-918 онлайн

47 страница из 149

But Theodoric the Amal was not the only chief of his race in the Balkan peninsula. He had a namesake, Theodoric the son of Triarius, better known as Theodoric the One-eyed, who had long served as a mercenary captain in the imperial army, and had headed the Teutonic auxiliaries in the camp of the usurper Basiliscus. When Basiliscus fell, Theodoric the One-eyed collected the wrecks of the rebel forces, strengthened them with broken bands of various races, many of whom were Ostrogoths, and kept the field against Zeno. He retired into the Balkans, and occasionally descended to ravage the Thracian plains; but meanwhile he sent an embassy to Zeno, offering to submit if he were given the title of magister militum, which he had held under Basiliscus, and taken with all his army into the imperial pay.

Zeno indignantly refused to entertain such terms, and resolved to take in hand the destruction of the rebel. |The two Theodorics.| He sent an Asiatic army into Thrace to beset the son of Triarius from the south, and bade his warlike vassal the son of Theodemir to attack his namesake from the north, on the Moesian side. The younger Theodoric eagerly consented, for he grudged to see any other Gothic chief than himself powerful in the peninsula, and looked down on the son of Triarius as a low-born upstart, because he did not come like himself from the royal blood of the Amals.^[4]