The effect of this contested election was to throw Rome into confusion. Parties of armed men who favoured the cause of one or the other candidate paraded the City, and all the streets were filled with riot and bloodshed. It seemed as if the days of Marius and Sulla were come back again, though it would have been impossible to explain to either Marius or Sulla what was the nature of the contest, a dispute as to the right to be considered successor to a fisherman of Bethsaida. When the anarchy was becoming intolerable, the Senate, Clergy, and People determined to invoke the mediation of Theodoric, thus furnishing the highest testimony to the reputation for fairness and impartiality which had been earned by the Arian king. Both the rival bishops repaired to Ravenna, and having laid the case before the king, heard his answer. "Whichsoever candidate was first chosen, if he also received the majority of votes, shall be deemed duly elected". Both qualifications were united in Symmachus, who was therefore for a time recognised as lawful Pope even by Laurentius himself.
The disturbances broke out again later on; charges, probably false charges, of gross immorality were brought against Symmachus, who fled from Rome, returned, was tried by a Synod, and acquitted. It was not till after nearly six years had elapsed and six Synods had been held, that Laurentius and his party gave up the contest and finally acquiesced in the legitimacy of the claim of Symmachus to the Popedom.
But most of these troubles were still to come: there was a lull in the storm, and it seemed as if the king's wise and righteous judgment had settled the succession to the Papal chair, when in the year 500 Theodoric visited Rome, seeing for the first time, in full middle life, the City whose name he had doubtless often heard with a child's wonder and awe in his father's palace by the Platten See. His first visit was paid to the great basilica of St. Peter, outside the walls, where he performed his devotions with all the outward signs of reverence which would have been exhibited by the most pious Catholic. [114]
Footnote 114:[ (return) ] Et occurrit Beato Petro devotissimus ac si Catholicus (Anon. Valesn, 65).
Before he entered the gates of the City he was welcomed by the Senate and People of Rome, who poured forth to meet him with every indication of joy. Borne along by the jubilant throng, he reached the Senate-house, which still stood in its majesty overlooking the Roman Forum. Here, in some portico attached to the Senate-house, which bore the name of the Golden Palm, he delivered an oration to the people. The accent of the speech may not have been faultless, [115] the style was assuredly not Ciceronian, but the matter was worthy of the enthusiastic acclamations with which it was received. Recognising the continuity of his government with that of the Emperors who had preceded him, he promised that with God's help he would keep inviolate all that the Roman Princes in the past had ordained for their people. So might a Norman or Angevin king, anxious to re-assure his Saxon subjects, swear to observe all the laws of the good King Edward the Confessor.
Footnote 115:[ (return) ] It is possible that historians somewhat underrate the degree of Theodoric's acquaintance with Latin as a spoken language. There was a great deal of Latin used in the Pannonian and Mesian regions, in which his childhood and youth were passed; and some, though certainly not so much, at Constantinople, where he spent his boyhood.
This speech of Theodoric's at the Golden Palm was listened to by an obscure African monk, whose emotions on the occasion are described to us by his biographer. Fulgentius, the grandson of a senator of Carthage, had forsaken what seemed a promising official career, and had accepted the solitude and the hardships of a monastic life, at a time when, owing to the severe persecution of the Catholics by the Vandal kings, there was no prospect of anything but ignominy, exile, and perhaps death for every eminent confessor of the Catholic faith. Fulgentius and his friends had suffered many outrages at the hands of Numidian freebooters and Vandal officers, and they meditated a flight into Egypt, where they might practise a yet more rigid monastic rule undisturbed by the civil power. In his search after a suitable resting-place for his community, Fulgentius, who was in the thirty-third year of his age, had visited Sicily, and now had reached Rome in this same summer of 500, which was made memorable by Theodoric's visit. "He found", we are told, "the greatest joy in this City, truly called 'the head of the world,' both the Senate and People of Rome testifying their gladness at the presence of Theodoric the King. Wherefore the blessed Fulgentius, to whom the world had long been crucified, after he had visited with reverence the shrines of the martyrs and saluted with humble deference as many of the servants of God as he could in so short a time be introduced to, stood in that place which is called Palma Aurea while Theodoric was making his harangue. There, as he gazed upon the nobles of the Roman Senate marshalled in their various ranks and adorned with comely dignity, and as he heard with chaste ears the favouring shouts of the people, he had a chance of knowing what the boastful pomp of this world resembles. Yet he looked not willingly upon aught in this gorgeous spectacle, nor was his heart seduced to take any pleasure in these worldly vanities, but rather kindled thereby to a more vehement desire for Jerusalem above. And thus with edifying discourse did he ever admonish the brethren who were present: 'How fair must be that heavenly Jerusalem, if the earthly Rome be thus magnificent! And if in this world such honour is paid to the lovers of vanity, what honour and glory shall be bestowed on the Saints who behold the Eternal Reality.' With many such words as these did the blessed Fulgentius debate with them in a profitable manner all that day, and now with his whole heart earnestly desiring to behold his monastery again, he sailed swiftly to Africa, touching at Sardinia, and presented himself to his monks, who, in the excess of their joy, could scarcely believe that the blessed Fulgentius was indeed returned".
Besides his promises of good government according to the old laws of Empire, Theodoric recognised the duty which, according to long-established usage, devolved upon the supreme ruler to provide "panem et circenses" [116] for the citizens of Rome. The elaborate machinery, part of the crowned Socialism of the Empire, by which a certain number of loaves of bread had been distributed to the poorer householders of the City, had probably broken down in the death-agony of the Cæsars of the West, and had not been again set going by Odovacar. We are told that Theodoric now distributed as rations "to the people of Rome and to the poor" 120,000 modii of corn yearly. As this represents only 30,000 bushels, and as in the flourishing days of the Empire no fewer than 200,000 citizens used to present themselves, probably once or twice a week, to receive their rations, it is evident that (if the chronicler's numbers are correct) we have here no attempt to revive the wholesale distribution of corn to the citizens--an expenditure with which the finances of Theodoric's kingdom were probably quite unable to cope. What was now done was more strictly a measure of "out-door relief" for the absolutely destitute classes, and was therefore a more legitimate employment of the energies of the State than the socialistic attempt to feed a whole people,which had preceded it.
Footnote 116:[ (return) ] Bread and circus-shows.
At the same time that he granted these annonæ, Theodoric also set aside, from the proceeds of a certain wine-tax, two hundred pounds of gold (£8,000) yearly for the restoration of the Imperial dwellings on the Palatine, and for the repair of the walls of Rome. Little did he foresee that a time would come when those walls, battered and breached as they were, would be all too strong for the fortunes of the Gothic warriors who would dash themselves vainly against their ramparts.