They received a cordial welcome from Odoacer, and rapidly blended with the people among whom they took up their residence. But fertile and beautiful Italy was too rich a prize in the eyes of the powerful Northern nations to be long left in the undisputed possession of Odoacer. Upon the northern banks of the Euxine Sea there was a populous nation called the Ostrogoths. Their king, Theodoric, had been educated at Constantinople, and was a civilized man, reigning over a comparatively barbaric people. He commenced his march upon Italy, accompanied by the whole nation. “The march of Theodoric,” says Gibbon, “must be considered as the emigration of an entire people. Each bold barbarian who had heard of the wealth and beauty of Italy was impatient to seek, through the most perilous adventures, the possession of such enchanting objects. The wives and children of the Goths, their aged parents and most precious effects, were carefully transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy baggage that followed the camp, by the loss of two thousand wagons, which had been sustained in a single action in the war of Epirus. For their subsistence the Goths depended on the magazines of corn, which was ground in portable mills by the hands of their women; on the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds; on the casual produce of the chase; and upon the contributions which they might impose on all who should presume to dispute their passage or to refuse their friendly assistance. Notwithstanding these precautions, they were exposed to the danger and almost to the distress of famine in a march of seven hundred miles, which had been undertaken in the depth of a rigorous winter.”[195] Their march was through provinces devastated by war and famine. Still Theodoric had many fierce battles to wage ere he descended the southern declivities of the Julian Alps, and displayed his banners on the confines of Italy. Odoacer met him on the eastern frontiers of Venetia. Conquered in a bloody battle, he retreated to the walls of Verona; and all Venetia fell into the hands of the Ostrogoths. Odoacer made another stand upon the banks of the Adige: a still more sanguinary battle was fought, and the broken bands of Odoacer fled to Ravenna, on the Adriatic. Theodoric marched triumphantly to Milan, where the ever-fickle multitude received the conqueror with every demonstration of joy. Still, for three years, wretched Italy was desolated by war: misery reigned from the Alps to the extremity of the Peninsula, as man’s inhumanity to man caused countless millions to mourn.