Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae val2.12

[57] Now Theodoric had sent Faustus Niger as an envoy to Zeno. But when the news of the latter’s death came, before the envoy returned, but after Theodoric had entered Ravenna and killed Odoacar, the Goths, without waiting for the command of the new emperor, made Theodoric their king.

[58] For he was a most brave and warlike man, whose father, Walamir, was called King of the Goths; but Theodoric was his natural son; his mother was called in Gothic Ereriliva, ¹ but being a Catholic received at her baptism the name Eusebia.

[59] Hence Theodoric was a man of great distinction and of good-will towards all men, and he ruled for thirty-three years. In his times Italy for thirty years enjoyed such good fortune that his successors also inherited peace.

[60] For whatever he did was good. He so governed two races at the same time, Romans and Goths, that although he himself was of the Arian ² sect, he nevertheless made no assault on the Catholic religion; he gave games in the circus and the amphitheatre, so that even by the Romans he was called a Trajan or a Valentinian, whose times he took as a model; and by the Goths, because of his edict, in which he established justice, he was judged to be in all respects their best king. Military service for the Romans he kept on the same footing as under the emperors. He was generous with gifts and the distribution of grain, and although he had found the public treasury nothing but a haystack, ³ by his efforts it was restored and made rich.

[61] Although untrained in letters, he was nevertheless so wise that even now some of his sayings are regarded among the people as aphorisms, and for that reason I am glad to place on record a few out of many. He said, One who has gold and a demon cannot hide the demon. Also, A poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich ⁴ Goth the Roman.

[62] A certain man died, leaving a wife and a little son who did not know his mother. Her son, when a small boy, was taken from her by some one, carried to another province, and there brought up. When he became a youth, he somehow returned to his mother, who had now become betrothed to another man. When the mother saw her son, she embraced him, thanking God that she had seen her son again, and he lived with her for a month. And behold! the mother’s betrothed came, and seeing the young man, asked who he was. She replied that he was her son. But when her betrothed learned that the youth was her son, he began to ask the return of the earnest-money ⁵ and to say: Either deny that he is your son, or I certainly depart hence. The mother yielded to her betrothed and began to deny her son, whom she herself had before acknowledged, saying: Leave my house, young man, since I took you up as a stranger. But he kept saying that he had come back to his mother and to the house of his father. To make a long story short, while this was going on the son appealed against his mother to the king, who ordered her to appear before him. And he said to her: Woman, your son appeals against you; what have you to say? Is he your son, or not? She replied: He is not my son, but I took him up as a stranger. And when the woman’s son had told the whole story in order to the king, he again said to the woman: Is he your son, or not? She said: He is not my son. The king said to her: How much property have you, woman? She replied: As much as a thousand gold-pieces. And when the king declared with an oath that he would not make anyone else than the young man himself her husband, and that she should receive no other husband, then the woman was disconcerted and confessed that the young man was her son. ⁶ And there are many other things told of the king.

[63] Afterwards Theodoric took to wife ⁷ a Frankish woman named Augoflada. For before he began to reign he had a wife, ⁸ who had borne him daughters. One of these, called Areaagni, he gave in marriage in Gaul to Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and another daughter of his, Theodegotha, to Sigismund, son of King Gundebadus. ⁹

[64] Theodoric, through Festus, made peace with the emperor Anastasius with regard to his assumption of the rule, and Anastasius sent back to him all the ornaments of the Palace, which Odoacar had transferred to Constantinople.

[65] At that same time a dispute arose in the city of Rome between Symmachus and Laurentius; ¹⁰ for both had been consecrated. But through God’s ordinance Symmachus, who also deserved it, got the upper hand. After peace was made in the city of the Church, King Theodoric went to Rome ¹¹ and met Saint Peter with as much reverence as if he himself were a Catholic. The Pope Symmachus, and the entire senate and ¹² people of Rome amid general rejoicing met him outside the city.

[66] Then coming to Rome and entering it, he appeared in the senate, and addressed the people at The Palm, ¹³ promising that with God’s help he would keep inviolate whatever the former Roman emperors had decreed.

[67] In celebration of his tricennalia ¹⁴ he entered the Palace in a triumphal procession for the entertainment of the people, and exhibited games in the Circus for the Romans. To the Roman people and to the poor of the city he gave each year a hundred and twenty thousand measures of grain, and for the restoration of the Palace and ¹⁵ the rebuilding of the walls of the city he ordered two hundred pounds to be given each year from the chest that contained the tax on wine.

[68] He also gave his own sister Amalafrigda in marriage to Transimundus, king of the Vandals. Liberius, whom he had appointed praetorian prefect at the beginning of his reign, he made a patrician, and appointed for him a successor. ¹⁶ Now his successor in the administration of the prefecture was Theodorus, son of Basilus. Odoin, his general, made a plot against the king.

[69] When Theodoric learned of it, he had Odoin beheaded in the palace which is called the Sessorium. ¹⁷ At the request of the people he gave orders that the words of the promise which he had made to them should be inscribed upon a bronze tablet and set up in a public place.

[70] Then returning to Ravenna, five months later, he gave Amalabirga, another sister of his, ¹⁸ in marriage to Herminifred, king of the Turingi, and in that way gained peace with all the nations round about. He was besides a lover of building and restorer of cities.

[71] At Ravenna he repaired the aqueduct which the emperor Trajan had constructed, and thus brought water into the city after a long time. He completely finished the palace, but did not dedicate it. He completed the colonnades around the palace. He also built baths and a palace at Verona, and added a colonnade extending all the way from the gate to the Palace; besides that, he restored the aqueduct at Verona, which had long since been destroyed, and brought water into the city, as well as ¹⁹ surrounding ²⁰ the city with new walls. Also at Ticinum ²¹ he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, besides ²² new city walls.

[72] He also showed many favours to the other cities. And he so won the good-will of the neighbouring nations, that they offered to make treaties with him, in the hope that he would be their king. Indeed, merchants flocked to him from the various provinces, for his organization was such that if anyone wished to send consignments of gold or silver in his domain, it was deemed as good as if he were within the walls of a city.

[73] And he followed this principle so fully throughout all Italy, that he gave no city a gate; and where there were already gates, they were never shut; and every one could carry on his business at whatever hour he chose, as if it were in daylight. In his time sixty measures of wheat were bought for a single gold-piece, ²³ and thirty amphorae of wine for the same price.