The year of the triumph of Belisarius saw new opportunities arising for him and for his master. In the autumn of 534 died the sickly and debauched youth who held the title of king of the Ostrogoths; he had not yet attained his eighteenth birthday. His mother, Amalaswintha, was now left face to face with the wild Goths, stripped of the protection of the royal name, and exposed to the enmity of the families of the chiefs whom she had executed. In despair of inducing the Goths to endure the rule of a queen-regnant, she determined to choose a colleague, and confer on him the title of king. Theodoric’s next male heir after Athalaric was a certain Theodahat, the son of his sister Amalaberga. [Sidenote: Amalaswintha and Theodahat.] This prince had been excluded by his uncle from all affairs of state for his notorious cowardice, covetousness, and duplicity. He was a Romanised Teuton of the worst type, and, as was truly said, _Vilis Gothus imitatur Romanum_; he had pronounced literary tastes, called himself a Platonic philosopher, and showed some care for the arts, but was wholly mean and corrupt. Amalaswintha thought to presume on the cowardice of her cousin, and to force him to become her tool; she forgot that even a coward may be ambitious. At the queen’s behest the assembly of the warriors of Italy hailed Theodahat and Amalaswintha joint rulers of the Ostrogoths. But in less than six months the intriguing king had suborned his partisans to seize and imprison his unfortunate cousin. She was cast into a castle on the lake of Bolsena, and shortly afterwards murdered, with Theodahat’s connivance, by some of the kinsfolk of the nobles whom she executed five years before. (May, 535.)