Res Gestae

Also a poor woman of the Gothic race, lying in a colonnade not far from the palace at Ravenna, gave birth to four snakes; two of these in the sight of the people were carried up on clouds from west to east and then fell into the sea; the two others, which had but a single head, were taken away. A star with a train of fire appeared, of the kind called a comet,[*](See Amm. xxv. 10, 2 ff.) and shone for fifteen days. There were frequent earthquakes.

After this the king began from time to time, when he found an opportunity, to vent his rage upon the Romans. Cyprianus, who was then a referee,[*](See Index II, Vol. I.) afterwards count of the privy purse and a master,[*](Perhaps magister mititm. ) was led by avarice to make a charge against the patrician Albinus, to the effect that he had sent to the emperor Justinus a letter hostile to Theodoric’s rule. When Albinus was summoned

Then Cyprianus, after some hesitation, produced false witnesses, not only against Albinus, but against his defender Boethius. Moreover, the king was plotting evil against the Romans and seeking an opportunity for killing them; hence he trusted the false witnesses rather than the senators.

Then Albinus and Boethius were imprisoned in the baptistery of a church. And the king summoned Eusebius, prefect of the city, to Ticinum, and pronounced sentence on Boethius without giving him a hearing. Presently at the Calventian estate,[*](Apparently named from an otherwise unrecorded CCalventius, modern Calvenzeno.) where Boethius was confined,[*](The sentence of death had been changed to exile.) he had him put to a wretched death. He was tortured for a long time with a cord bound about his forehead so tightly that his eyes cracked in their sockets, and finally, while under torture, he was beaten to death with a cudgel.

Then the king, on his return to Ravenna, acted no longer as a friend of God, but as an enemy to His law; forgetful of all His kindness and of the favour which He had shown him, trusting to his own arm, believing, too, that the emperor Justinus stood in great fear of him, he sent and summoned to Ravenna Johannes,[*](The first Roman pope of that name, successor to Hormisdas.) who at that time sat upon the apostolic throne, and said to him: Go to the emperor Justinus in Constantinople, and tell him