[672] 'Considerate etiam, principes docti, et abavi vestri historica monumenta recolite, quantum decessores vestri studuerint de suo jure relinquere ut eis parentum nostrorum foedera provenirent.'
[673] 'Nunc illi vestram gratiam ultro quaerunt, qui suis parentibus meliores se esse cognoscunt.' Dahn remarks that Theodahad's asserted superiority to Theodoric probably consisted in his philosophical culture.
[674] See [note] on the [preceding letter].
[675] 'Ut per eum disceremus acceptum vobis esse quod in hac republicâ constat evenisse.' At first sight this seems to refer to the death of Amalasuentha or to the accession of Theodahad. Dahn thinks that those events have been disposed of in previous letters. Perhaps it is a general expression for 'the whole course of recent events in Italy.' Though upon the whole rejecting the story of Theodora's complicity in the death of Amalasuentha, I am bound to admit that this passage lends a certain amount of probability to the charge. At the same time, the words in the next sentence, 'per divinam providentiam omni suspicione detersâ,' are susceptible of an honourable meaning, even if the death of Amalasuentha be alluded to. 'You and your husband accused us of that crime. Now by God's providence we have been able to show that we were guiltless of it [that it was done without our privity by the relations of the three Gothic nobles whom she had put to death]. Nothing therefore remains to hinder peace between us.'
[676] Apparently sent at the same time as the two preceding letters.
[677] Negotiations were evidently still going on between the Emperor and the Pope, probably with reference to the election of Anthimus, who, though accused of Monophysitism, had been made Patriarch of Constantinople in 535 by Theodora's influence, and whom the Pope apparently refused to recognise. He was afterwards deposed by Pope Agapetus when he visited Constantinople.
[678] Cassiodorus.
[679] Apparently Veranilda had in the reign of Theodoric become a convert from Arianism to Orthodoxy, and had suffered some pecuniary losses in consequence, which Theodahad now proposes to make up to her. See Dahn, Könige der Germanen iii. 199, n. 4.
[680] Cassiodorus.
[681] 'Quorum dignitas ad hoc legitur instituta, ut de repositis copiis populum saturare possetis.' Probably an allusion to Joseph, whom Cassiodorus celebrates as the first Praefectus Praetorio.