So it went on, year after year—sometimes with terrible reverses for Dietrich, till the year 480. Then the old One-eyed died, in a strange way. Mounting a wild horse at the tent-door, the beast reared before he could get his seat; afraid of pulling it over by the curb, he let it go. A lance, in Gothic fashion, was hanging at the tent-door, and the horse plunged the One-eyed against it. The point went deep into his side, and the old fighting man was at rest for ever.
And then came a strange peripeteia for the Amal. Zeno, we know not why, sent instantly for him. He had been ravaging, pursuing, defeating Roman troops, or being defeated by them. Now he must come to Rome. His Goths should have the Lower Danube. He should have glory and honour to spare. He came. His ideal, at this time, seems actually to have been to live like a Roman citizen in Constantinople, and help to govern the Empire. Recollect, he was still little more than five and twenty years old.
So he went to Constantinople, and I suppose with him the faithful mother, and faithful sister, who had been with him in all his wanderings. He had a triumph decreed him at the Emperor’s expense, was made Consul Ordinarius (‘which,’ saith Jornandes, ‘is accounted the highest good and chief glory in the world’) and Master-general, and lodged in the palace.
What did it all mean? Dietrich was dazzled by it, at least for a while. What it meant, he found out too soon. He was to fight the Emperor’s battles against all rebels, and he fought them, to return irritated, complaining (justly or unjustly) of plots against his life; to be pacified, like a child, with the honour of an equestrian statue; then to sink down into Byzantine luxury for seven inglorious years, with only one flashing out of the ancient spirit, when he demanded to go alone against the Bulgars, and killed their king with his own hand.
What woke him from his dream? The cry of his starving people.
The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men and mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling till their families were in want. They send to the Amal. ‘While thou art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving—come back ere we are ruined.’
They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his mercenaries. He was growing now to be a great power; styling himself ‘King of nations [109],’ giving away to the Visigoths the Narbonnaise, the last remnant of the Western Empire; collecting round him learned Romans like Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus; respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly doing his best to govern well. His mercenaries, however, would not be governed. Under their violence and oppression agriculture and population were both failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of ‘Æmilia, Tuscia, ceteræque provinciæ in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.’
Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the Goths to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they despised him himself as a man of low birth. But his father Ædecon had been chief of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal blood. It is very unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of Teutons would have followed any man who had not Odin’s blood in his veins. Was there a stain on Odoacer from his early connexion with Attila? Or was the hatred against his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste Herules,—a question of race, springing out of those miserable tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak? Be that as it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury. He had gone over the Alps into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood of Vienna) and utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone into Italy under his banner. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of his old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the mass. Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and carried their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his ‘noxious wife;’ and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly) the body of St. Severinus himself. But this had been a small thing, if he had not advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with Fava, the captive king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards, in the approved fashion of the ancient Romans on such occasions, to put Fava to death in cold blood.
The records of this feat are to be found, as far as I know them, in one short chapter (I. xix.) of Paulus Diaconus, and in Muratori’s notes thereto; but however small the records, the deed decided the fate of Italy. Frederic, son of Fava, took refuge with the Ostrogoths, and demanded revenge in the name of his royal race; and it is easy to conceive that the sympathies of the Goths would be with him. An attack (seemingly unprovoked) on an ancient Teutonic nation by a mere band of adventurers was—or could easily be made—a grievous wrong, and clear casus belli, over and above the innate Teutonic lust for fighting and adventures, simply for the sake of ‘the sport.’
Dietrich went back, and from that day, the dream of eastern luxury was broken, and young Dietrich was a Goth again, for good and for evil.