Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

128 5. the western kingdoms
achieved with Vandal Africa; this new concord was again symbolized by a
marriage, that of Theoderic’s sister to the Vandal king Thrasamund
(496–523). To the west, the dominance in southern Gaul of the Visigoths,
who had sent help to Theoderic in 490, was assured by family ties and sentiments
of common ethnicity.
This western Mediterranean ‘co-prosperity sphere’ that Theoderic and
his advisers created was to prove fragile. The empire, initially grudingly tolerant
of Theoderic’s position, became hostile after the Ostrogothic seizure
of Pannonia. An imperial fleet was despatched to the Adriatic in 508 and
carried out some raids on the Italian coast, but the troubled internal politics
of the empire in the second half of the reign of Anastasius prevented
the outbreak of more extensive hostilities. Anastasius turned instead to the
use of diplomatic means to try to undermine the Ostrogothic kingdom.
This was well matched by the territorial ambitions of the Frankish king
Clovis, whose hopes of expansion southwards were blocked by the Gothic
presence. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Visigoths at Vouillé in 507,
Theoderic was forced to intervene directly in Gaul and annex Provence to
secure the western approaches to Italy. In 511 he brought the whole
Visigothic kingdom under his hegemony, by sending an army to expel
Gesalic and to install his grandson Amalaric (511–31) as king. Frankish
aggression, abetted by imperial diplomacy, was held in check, but the Herul
kingdom was destroyed in 510 by the Lombards. The Thuringians at least
remained secure until after Theoderic’s death in 526. Only in 534 was their
kingdom overrun by the Franks and Herminafrid killed. In the south,
Vandal friendship with the Ostrogothic kingdom survived until Hilderic
succeeded Thrasamund in 523, when the new king’s rapprochement with
Constantinople led Theoderic to order the building of a fleet in 526 against
the possibility of attacks from Africa.
Internally, Theoderic’s achievements were potentially longer-lasting. His
programme of public works, involving the building or restoring of aqueducts,
baths, defensive walls and palaces in many of the principal cities of
Italy, conferred immediate benefits and gave a sense of patronage that was
imperial in character, as was his formal adventus into the city of Rome in
500. Public entertainments and charities were also supported, including a
restoration of the corn dole to the poor of Rome. This emphasis on the
revival of traditional features of public life, together with the use made of
senators in the administration, seems to have endeared Theoderic’s regime
to many of the Roman aristocracy. Others were less willing to see the rule
of an Arian Germanic soldier as a permanent replacement for imperial
government, and such sentiments surfaced in the accusations made against
Boethius, the former consul and magister officiorum. He was accused by some
fellow senators, late in 523, of shielding traitors in the senate. After trial by
the praefectus urbis, he was condemned and executed in 524. Despite his later
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