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That occupation of Narses in 552 is the date of Rome's extinction as the old secular imperial city. The year after his recal came the worst plague of all, and the most enduring. The Lombards did but repeat for the subjection of Italy to a fresh northern invasion what Narses had done to deliver it from Theodorick's older one in the preceding century.
He took two of the noblest Romans, Boethius and Cassiodorus, for his friends and counsellors, and in the letters of the latter, from about the year 500 to the end of Theodorick's reign, we possess most valuable information as to the way in which Theodorick governed. Odoacer would seem likewise, during the years of his government until he was shut up in Ravenna, to have followed a like policy.
He left Italy almost subdued, and carried with him the captive king of the Goths, Vitiges, as in former years he had carried Gelimer, the captive king of the Vandals. This was in 539, thirteen years after Theodorick's death. The first act of that fearful drama, the Gothic war, was over. But as soon as Belisarius disappeared, the Goths began to recover themselves.
Milan surrendered to Alboin in the autumn of 569, and after three years' siege he entered as conqueror into Theodorick's palace in Pavia. Only Rome, Ravenna, and the cities of the coast still carried the imperial flag. The Romans themselves regarded as a marvel the maintenance of their scarcely defended city. Alboin aimed at making the palace of the Cæsars his royal residence.
What was done was to turn Theodorick's longing eyes upon the land possessing "the hapless dower of beauty". Zeno commissioned him to turn Odoacer out, and to take his place. In 489, Theodorick led the great mass of his people into Italy, at the suggestion, and with the warrant of, the man whom Pope Felix had appealed to as his son, the Roman emperor and Christian prince.
In that addressed upon his own accession, which he sent to the emperor Anastasius by the hands of Germanus, bishop of Capua, and Cresconius, bishop of Trent, on occasion of Theodorick's embassy for the purpose of obtaining the title of king, he strove to preserve the "Roman prince" from the Eutychean heresy.
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