The marriage would set him right in the eyes of the Goths, while it would free her from the suspicion of having murdered her son, in order to reign alone. Theodatus meanwhile was to have the name of royalty; but she was to keep the power and the money--a foolish, confused plan, which could have but one ending. Theodatus married her of course, and then cast her into prison, seized all her treasures, and threw himself into the arms of that party among the Goths, who hated Amalasuentha for having punished their oppressions. The end was swift and sad. By the time that Justinian's ambassador landed, Amalasuentha was strangled in her bath; and all that Peter the ambassador had to do was, to catch at the cause of quarrel, and declare 'inexpiable war' on the part of Justinian, as the avenger of the Queen. And then began that dreadful East Goth war, which you may read for yourselves in the pages of an eye-witness, Procopius;--a war which destroyed utterly the civilization of Dietrich's long and prosperous reign, left Italy a desert, and exterminated the Roman people. That was the last woe: but of it I must tell you in my next Lecture. LECTURE VI--THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. Of this truly dreadful Gothic war I can give you but a hasty sketch; of some of the most important figures in it, not even a sketch. I cannot conceive to myself, and therefore cannot draw for you, the famous Belisarius. Was he really the strange compound of strength and weakness which Procopius, and after him Gibbon, represent him?--a caricature, for good and evil, of our own famous Marlborough? You must read and judge for yourselves. I cannot, at least as yet, offer you any solution of the enigma. Still less can I conceive to myself Narses, living till his grey hairs in the effeminate intrigues of the harem, and then springing forth a general; the Warrior Eunuch; the misanthrope avenging his great wrong upon all mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to spin among maids than to command armies, and he answered, that he would spin her such a thread as she could not unravel; and kept his word (as legends say) by inviting the Lombards into Italy.