to degenerate Romans[77], had sacked half the cities, while in the rest the impoverished citizens could no longer pay the bills. He adds that at Rome a circus was still open and a theatre at Ravenna, and that these were thronged with delighted travellers from all parts of the Empire[78]. There must, however, have been a theatre at Rome as well, for Sidonius found it there when he visited the city, twelve years after it had been sacked for the second time, in 467. He was appointed prefect of the city, and in one of his letters expresses a fear lest, if the corn-supply fail, the thunders of the theatre may burst upon his head[79]. In a poem written a few years earlier he describes the _spectacula theatri_ of mimes, pantomimes, and acrobats as still flourishing at Narbonne[80]. The next and the latest records of the stage in the West date from the earlier part of the sixth century, when the Ostrogoths held sway in Italy. They are to be found in the _Variae_ of Cassiodorus, who held important official posts under the new lords of Rome, and they go to confirm the inference which the complaint of Salvian already suggests that a greater menace to the continuance of the theatre lay in the taste of the barbarians than even in the ethics of Christianity. The Ostrogoths had long dwelt within the frontiers of the Empire, and Theodoric, ruling as ‘King of the Goths and Romans in Italy,’ over a mixed multitude of Italians and Italianate Germans, found it necessary to continue the _spectacula_, which in his heart he despised. There are many indications of this in the state-papers preserved in the _Variae_, which may doubtless be taken to express the policy and temper of the masters of Cassiodorus in the rhetorical trappings of the secretary himself. The _scenici_ are rarely mentioned without a sneer, but their performances and those of the _aurigae_, or circus-drivers, who have now come to be included under the all-embracing designation of _histriones_, are carefully regulated[81]. The gladiators have, indeed, at last disappeared, two centuries after Constantine had had the grace to suppress them in the East[82]. There is a letter from Theodoric to an architect, requiring him to repair the theatre of Pompey, and digressing into an historical sketch, imperfectly erudite, of the history of the drama, its invention by the Greeks, and its degradation by the Romans[83]. A number of documents deal with the choice of a _pantomimus_ to represent the _prasini_ or ‘Greens,’ and show that the rivalry of the theatre-factions remained as fierce as it had been in the days of Bathyllus and Pylades. Helladius is given the preference over Thorodon, and a special proclamation exhorts the people to keep the peace[84]. Still more interesting is the _formula_, preserved by Cassiodorus, which was used in the appointment of the _tribunus voluptatum_, an official whom we have already come across in the rescripts of the emperors of the fourth century. This is so