Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the Goths to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they despised him himself as a man of low birth. But his father AEdecon had been chief of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal blood. It is very unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of Teutons would have followed any man who had not Odin's blood in his veins. Was there a stain on Odoacer from his early connexion with Attila? Or was the hatred against his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste Herules,--a question of race, springing out of those miserable tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak? Be that as it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury. He had gone over the Alps into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood of Vienna) and utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone into Italy under his banner. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of his old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the mass. Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and carried their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his 'noxious wife;' and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly) the body of St. Severinus himself. But this had been a small thing, if he had not advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with Fava, the captive king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards, in the approved fashion of the ancient Romans on such occasions, to put Fava to death in cold blood. The records of this feat are to be found, as far as I know them, in one short chapter (I. xix.) of Paulus Diaconus, and in Muratori's notes thereto; but however small the records, the deed decided the fate of Italy. Frederic, son of Fava, took refuge with the Ostrogoths, and demanded revenge in the name of his royal race; and it is easy to conceive that the sympathies of the Goths would be with him. An attack (seemingly unprovoked) on an ancient Teutonic nation by a mere band of adventurers was--or could easily be made--a grievous wrong, and clear casus belli, over and above the innate Teutonic lust for fighting and adventures, simply for the sake of 'the sport.' Dietrich went back, and from that day, the dream of eastern luxury was broken, and young Dietrich was a Goth again, for good and for evil. He assembled the Goths, and marched straight on Constantinople, burning and pillaging as he went. So say, at least, the Greek historians, of whom, all through this strange story, no one need believe more than he likes. Had the Goths had the writing of the life of Dietrich, we should have heard another tale. As it is, we have, as it were, a life of Lord Clive composed by the court scribes of Delhi.