After a reign of sixty years, the throne of the Gothic kings was filled by the exarchs of Ravenna, the representatives in peace and war of the emperor of the Romans. Their jurisdiction was soon reduced to the limits of a narrow province; but Narses himself, the first and most powerful of the exarchs, administered about fifteen years the entire kingdom of Italy. Like Belisarius, he had deserved the honours of envy, calumny, and disgrace; but the favourite eunuch still enjoyed the confidence of Justinian, or the leader of a victorious army awed and repressed the ingratitude of a timid court. The fortifications were restored; a duke was stationed for the defence and military command of each of the principal cities; and the eye of Narses pervaded the ample prospect from Calabria to the Alps. The remains of the Gothic nation evacuated the country, or mingled with the people: the Franks, instead of revenging the death of Butilin, abandoned, without a struggle, their Italian conquests; and the rebellious Sindual, chief of the Heruli, was subdued, taken, and hung on a lofty gallows by the inflexible justice of the exarch. The civil state of Italy, after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed by a pragmatic sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of the pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools and tribunals of the West: he ratified the acts of Theodoric and his immediate successors, but every deed was rescinded and abolished, which force had extorted, or fear had subscribed, under the usurpation of Totila. A moderate theory was framed to reconcile the rights of property with the safety of prescription, the claims of the state with the poverty of the people, and the pardon of offences with the interest of virtue and order of society.
Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was shortly degraded to the second rank. Yet the senators were gratified by the permission of visiting their estates in Italy, and of approaching without obstacle the throne of Constantinople; the regulation of weights and measures was delegated to the pope and senate; and the salaries of lawyers and physicians, of orators and grammarians, were destined to preserve or rekindle the light of science in the ancient capital. Justinian might dictate benevolent edicts, and Narses might second his wishes by the restoration of cities, and more especially of churches. But the power of kings is most effectual to destroy: and the twenty years of the Gothic War had consummated the distress and depopulation of Italy.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[95] [Bury[b] here uses this spelling, as do most of the German writers, while Hodgkin[c] prefers to retain “the Odovakar of the contemporary authorities in all its primeval ruggedness, instead of softening it down with later historians (chiefly the Byzantine annalists) into the smooth and slippery Odoacer.” In this work, however, the more familiar form sanctified by long usage is continued.]
[96] So Gibbon,[d] but Hodgkin,[c] who puts the birth of Theodoric in 454, places the death of Attila a year before, while Bury[b] makes it the same year.
[97] [These curious details are included in the account of Malchus.[f]]
[98] [This man who shared the great Theodoric’s name, and threatened his power, while riding an unruly horse was borne against a spear hanging before his tent door. The wound proved fatal, according to Evagrius,[g] who tells the story.]
[99] [Tufa was his name; he first left Odoacer for Theodoric; then deserted back again. Hodgkin compares his defection to Marshal Ney’s going over to Napoleon when he returned in 1815. Later Tufa was killed in a feud with another deserter from Theodoric, Frederic the Rugian.]
[100] [Hodgkin[c] doubts this story, which rests solely on the anonymous Valesian Ms.[k]]