Res Gestae

At that same time a dispute arose in the city of Rome between Symmachus and Laurentius;[*](About the bishopric.) 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[*](In the year 500.) and met Saint Peter with as much reverence as if he

Then coming to Rome and entering it, he appeared in the senate, and addressed the people at The Palm,[*](A name apparently used from the fifth or sixth century for the area at Rome lying between the Curia and the arch of Septimius Severus; undoubtedly the same as the Palma Aurea of Fulgentius, Acta S. Fulgenti, in Acta Sanctorum, i. p. 37, ch. 13, Jan.) promising that with God’s help he would keep inviolate whatever the former Roman emperors had decreed.

In celebration of his tricennalia[*](Theodoric was in the eighth year of his reign and the Decennalia were sometimes celebrated ahead of time. Hadr. Valesius proposed to read decennalem for tricennalem. ) 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[*](seu perhaps = et; see note 1.) 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.

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.[*](A promotion; see § 36, note 6.) Now his successor in the administration of the prefecture was Theodorus, son of Basilus. Odoin, his general, made a plot against the king.

When Theodoric learned of it, he had Odoin beheaded in the palace which is called the Sessorium.[*](A building of unknown origin, situated at the extreme south-east of the Fifth Region, adjoining the Amphitheatrum Castrense. After the part outside the Aurelian wall was destroyed, the extensive inner section became an imperial residence by the beginning of the fourth century, and Helena, the mother of Constantine, lived there.)

Then returning to Ravenna, five months later, he gave Amalabirga, another sister of his,[*](Others call her his niece.) 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.

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[*](For this use of alius see Class. Phil. xxiii. (1928), pp. 60 ff., and for its use in Ammianus, Amer. Jour. of Phil. lvii. (1936), pp. 137 ff.) surrounding[*](circuit, late Latin for circumdedit. ) the city with new walls. Also at Ticinum[*](Modern Pavia.) he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, besides[*](See note 2.) new city walls.

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