The year was 455, two years after Attila's death. Near Vienna a boy was born, of Theodemir one of the Gothic kings and his favourite Erleva. He was sent when eight years old to Constantinople as a hostage. The Emperor Leo had agreed to pay the Goths 300 pounds of gold every year, if they would but leave him in peace; and young Dietrich was the pledge of the compact. There he grew up amid all the wisdom of the Romans, watching it all, and yet never even learning to write. It seems to some that the German did not care to learn; it seems to me rather that they did not care to teach. He came back to his people at eighteen, delighted them by his strength and stature, and became, to all appearance, a Goth of the Goths; going adventures with six thousand volunteers against the Sarmatae, who had just defeated the Greeks, and taken a city--which he retook, but instead of restoring it to the Emperor, kept himself. Food becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy, some down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully presented them with the country of which they had already taken possession. In every case, you see, this method went on. The failing Emperors bought off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they could not; and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance. The relations between the two parties can be hardly better explained, than by comparing them to those between the English adventurers in Hindostan and the falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.