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Updated: May 16, 2025
Africa was once more and in reality a province of the empire, and offered an excellent base of operations for the conquest of Italy, now to be undertaken. In the summer of 535, eighteen months later, Justinian began the great war against the Goths, the opportunity for which was offered him by the murder of Amalasuntha, and the result of which was to be the re-establishment of the empire in Italy.
Very different from the tomb of Dante, and different in the associations it awakes, is the Rotunda or Mausoleum of Theodoric the Goth, outside the Porta Serrata, whose daughter, Amalasuntha, as it is supposed, about the year 530, erected this imposing structure as a certain place "to keep his memory whole and mummy hid" for ever.
Having disposed of Amalasuntha, he sent an embassy to Constantinople to explain his conduct and to attempt to come to terms with Caesar. For his ambassadors he chose not Gothic nobles, who might have found his actions to their advantage, but Roman senators all but one of whom told a plain tale.
The monument of Theodoric was erected by his daughter Amalasuntha, in a conspicuous situation, which commanded the city of Ravenna, the harbor, and the adjacent coast.
The result was disastrous; for the young Athalaric, like a true barbarian, was soon led away into a bestial sensuality which presently destroyed his health and sent him to an early grave. Seeing his instability both of body and mind, Amalasuntha entered into secret communication with Constantinople, where Justinian was now emperor, and even prepared for a possible flight to that city.
His palace, his churches, and the mausoleums in which his daughter Amalasuntha laid the hero's bones, have survived the sieges of Belisarius and Astolphus, the conquest of Pepin, the bloody quarrels of Iconoclasts with the children of the Roman Church, the mediæval wars of Italy, the victory of Gaston de Foix, and still stand gorgeous with marbles and mosaics in spite of time and the decay of all around them.
Amalaric was restored to the throne of Spain. Italy, with all the conquests of the Ostrogoths, was bequeathed to Athalaric; whose age did not exceed ten years, but who was cherished as the last male offspring of the line of Amali, by the short-lived marriage of his mother Amalasuntha with a royal fugitive of the same blood.
Having for a moment the ear of Theodoric's daughter, Amalasuntha, when she ruled for her son, Maximus urged her to yield her kingdom to the Emperor, and all but saw his counsel acted upon. After all, was not Cassiodorus right? Were not the senators who had ceaselessly intrigued with Byzantium in truth traitors to Rome?
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