We have unfortunately no description of the great Ostrogoth's outward appearance, though the indications in his history would lead us to suppose that he was a man of stalwart form and soldierly bearing. Nor is this deficiency adequately made up to us by his coins, since, as has been already said, the gold and silver pieces which were circulated in his reign bore the impress of the Eastern Emperor, and the miserable little copper coins which bear his effigy do not pretend to portraiture.
HALF-SILIQUA OF THEODORIC (SILVER)
BEARING THE HEAD OF ANASTASIUS.
CHAPTER IX.
ROMAN OFFICIALS--CASSIODORUS.
The government of Italy still carried on according to Roman precedent--Classification of the officials--The Consulship and the Senate--Cassiodorus, his character and his work--His history of the Goths--His letters and state papers.
have said that one of the most important characteristics of Theodoric's government of Italy was that it was conducted in accordance with the traditions of the Empire and administered mainly by officials trained in the Imperial school. To a certain extent the same thing is true of all the Teutonic monarchies which arose in the fifth century on the ruins of the Empire. In dealing with the needs and settling the disputes of the large, highly-organised communities, into whose midst they had poured themselves, it was not possible, if it had been desirable, for the rulers to remain satisfied with the simple, sometimes barbarous, principles of law and administration which had sufficed for the rude farmer-folk who dwelt in isolated villages beyond the Rhine and the Danube. Nor was this necessity disliked by the rulers themselves. They soon perceived that the Roman law, with its tendency to derive all power from the Imperial head of the State, and the Roman official staff, an elaborate and well-organised hierarchy, every member of which received orders from one above him and transmitted orders to those below, were far more favourable to their own prerogative and gave them a far higher position over against their followers and comrades in war, than the institutions which had prevailed in the forests of Germany. Hence, as I have said, all the new barbarian royalties, even that of the Vandals in Africa (in some respects more anti-Roman than any other), preserved much of the laws and machinery of the Roman Empire; but Theodoric's Italian kingdom preserved the most of all. It might in fact almost be looked upon as a mere continuation of the old Imperial system, only with a strong, laborious, martial Goth at the head of affairs, able and willing to keep all the members of the official hierarchy sternly to their work, instead of the ruler whom the last three generations had been accustomed to behold, a man decked with the purple and diadem, but too weak, too indolent, too nervously afraid of irritating some powerful captain of fœderati, or some wealthy Roman noble, to be able to do justice to all classes of his subjects.