511 to 526 CE
“Lying in a featherbed will not bring you fame, nor staying beneath the quilt, and he who uses up his life without achieving fame leaves no more vestige of himself on earth than smoke in the air or foam upon the water.” –Dante
The last years of Theodoric’s reign in Italy saw the erosion of confidence, and increasing internal strife, along with diplomatic reversals abroad.
Eight episodes, ladies and gentlemen. This will be the eighth episode about Theodoric the Great and the kingdom he ruled in Italy. It was never my intention to go this deep on the subject, but like an onion, or an ogre, when you look, there’s more layers underneath, and sometimes they make you cry. Also they’re essential ingredients in chili. My chili may be different from yours.
Before we get started, I have a small correction. Last episode, I said there were four Patriarchal Churches: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Twitter user Leonard pointed out to me, correctly, that there were in fact five, and I had omitted the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It’s an especially irritating mistake since the Bishop of Jerusalem was confirmed as a Patriarch at the council of Chalcedon in 451, which was where the whole blessed mess started. D’oh.
Right, Theodoric. Teddy, as I somehow have avoided calling him until just now. Today is the day to bring the madness to a close so we can start some new madness. It’s time to finish off the reign, and indeed life, of Theodoric the Great.
We left off in 511, his annus mirabilis. His army was loyal, well funded, and powerful. His realm was rich, and at peace internally. After taking into his hands the rule of the Visigothic lands in Spain and Septimania, and exerting his influence over the Burgundians and the Vandals with a combination of marriage and maneuver, Theodoric was on top of the world, looking down on creation. His time to enjoy the view would be limited.
The shadow that fell over the later years of Theodoric’s reign was mostly cast by one looming issue: succession. The obvious fact that was staring everyone in the face as the king aged was that he had no sons, and was unlikely to produce any. Failure to effectively deal with that problem would lead the kingdom down a rocky road, not to Dublin, but to chaos and eventual disaster.
While Theodoric was still alive, there would be the collapse of his carefully arranged diplomatic position, some of it accompanied by personal losses for Theodoric. That would be related to very real losses for his religion, as some key players turned from Arianism to Orthodoxy, and accordingly shifted their alignment away from Ravenna and toward Constantinople. How deeply Theodoric felt this is moot, but it may have influenced his behavior in later years in a real way, as he grew increasingly paranoid in the face of opposition. The problems mounted through the last few years, all the way up to his death in 526.
At the end then we’ll look back at what the man accomplished, and consider what it all meant. Onward then.
In 511, Theodoric was pushing sixty, a ripe old age for the time, and it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be producing a son. The succession must have weighed on his mind; he couldn’t know that he still had 15 years left, and so he set about making arrangements for the future. He didn’t have a son, but he did have one unmarried daughter. His youngest daughter Amalasuintha, his only child with his Frankish queen Audofleda. Legitimacy could theoretically be passed through her.
Amalasuintha was an impressive person, if the reports of commentators like Procopius are to be believed, and Theodoric had no concerns about her competency. But there was no tradition at all among the Goths of women in political leadership, as far as we can see. At least, Theodoric did not believe that his Ostrogoths would accept Amalasuintha as their queen without a male consort. And anyway it was a dangerous world out there. Amalasuintha would need a protector who could command the army. On top of that, Theodoric wanted a dynasty. All the really cool kids had one. Theodoric needed to find her a husband.
But it couldn’t be just anyone; he had some specific requirements for the man who would marry his little girl. Of course, none of them had anything to do with personal compatibility or Amalasuintha’s feelings. This was about marriage, not love, obviously. I feel a list coming on.
He needed to be a Goth.
He needed to be of royal blood, and there was only one royal line in the Ostrogothic kingdom, the Amali, Theodoric’s line.
He couldn’t be too closely related though, because, well, ew.
So Theodoric dug into his family history. Or he had Cassiodorus dig into his family history. Or he told Cassiodorus to find a likely lad and then make up some family history. Cassiodorus was actually around this time working on his history of the goths. As an exercise in historiography, he did what he could. But as an exercise in Dynasty building, he pulled out all the stops for his king. A continuous genealogy stretching all the way back in an unbroken line to the first kings of the Grethungi, giving the Goths a history of two thousand years, and more to the point, an unbroken line of kingship back to time immemorial. That kind of history would mean that the Goths were older as a people than the Romans, and incidentally, that the Amals were senior to the Visigoths’ royal family, the Balthi. We’ve been over all this before. The important thing for the succession problem was that along the way, he turned up a cadet line of the Amali, at the end of which was a young man who’d grown up in Iberia, locally prominent, “strong in wisdom and in body”, named Eutharic.
Eutharic was perfect, he was of high rank in the Visigothic kingdom, and could help weld the two halves of Thedoric’s empire together more permanently. He was of Gothic descent, and even if his Amali heritage was fudged a bit, it was accepted enough to get him in with the Ostrogothic elite. Roman sources aren’t particularly complementary, he was “an excessively rough man, and enemy of the Catholic faith” according to Valesanius, but they weren’t the constituency that Theodoric was trying to appease. Those comments were made in hindsight anyway. Eutharic was acceptable enough for Constantinople, and that sealed the deal. Eutharic and Amalasuentha were married in 515, and a son quickly followed, named Athalaric. The two had a daughter as well, named Matasuintha. In 519, Emperor Justin underlined his acceptance of Eutharic by accepting his nomination as consul, with the emperor Justin himself as co-consul, and adopting him as a “son-in-arms”. Implicit in that personal support was also approval for Theodoric’s succession plan. For the moment, Theodoric felt he could relax, just a little bit, in that department.
But if the wheel of fortune stops turning, it ceases to be the wheel. In 522, at the age of 42, Eutharic suddenly died. Theodoric was by then 68, and the only possible heir he had in-country was little Athalaric, just six at the time. It was unlikely Theodoric would live long enough to see his grandson reach his majority.
Eutharic’s death was a pebble tossed into the pond of the western status quo, and its ripples were felt immediately. The principle of primogeniture was a long way off from being established. These were dangerous times, a king had to be strong and competent right away, we couldn’t be waiting around for a boy king to age into the role. Theodoric went from paterfamilias of a promising dynasty to a lame-duck monarch with no strong heirs, and the other kingdoms made to wiggle out from under the Ostrogothic hegemony.
Well, wait a minute, what about all those strategic marriages Theodoric had arranged, weren’t they supposed to make sure everyone stayed happy? Why are people wiggling? That had indeed been the purpose of those marriages, but the thing about life is that stuff just keeps on happening. There had been changes in the other kingdoms too, and because of them, before long it was obvious that that pebble was actually a domino, and the other dominos quickly started to fall.
Let’s start with Ariagne Ostrogotho, the daughter who had married the Burgundian Prince Sigismund. Because here there was a tragic tale.
Ariagne died sometime before 516, but not before giving birth to a son, named Sigeric. Gundobad died in 516, and passed the throne to Sigismund. It may be that his wife and father’s death led Sigismund to seek elsewhere for spiritual answers, but that’s wild speculation on my part. For whatever reason, Sigismund did convert to Catholicism in 514 or 15, a year or so before he became king. So Theodoric lost a daughter, an ally, a co-religionist, and a known quantity on his doorstep, all within a few years.
Sigismund re-married, as you do, and as sometimes can happen, the new woman of the house took agin’ her stepson. This is all coming from Gregory of Tours, who can be a little gossipy, and also falls squarely into the wicked-stepmother trope basket, so this is a story we have to take with enough salt to rim a margarita glass. The stepmother worked on Sigismund, whispered to him, and convinced him that Sigeric was plotting treachery and murder. Finally Sigismund cracked, and had his son strangled. This was around 522, and so now Theodoric had lost a grandson, and another potential heir.
The stepmother part of the story is probably hogwash. Heinous as it is, the murder of the Burgundian prince around the same year as Eutharic’s death was probably part of a campaign to free Burgundia from Theodoric’s influence. This would turn out to be a poor decision for the Burgundians, but I’m just going to leave that as a tease for later, and move on.
Arianism was suffering setbacks elsewhere too. In 508 Clovis, king of the Franks and general pain in the ass, had been baptized as a Catholic. Whether he was converting from paganism or from Arianism is a point of historical contention, but either way, the ten-ton gorilla was now in the Other Guy’s pocket. His conversion triggered that of other frankish chiefs, and before you knew it, all of Frankia was suddenly claimed by the Catholic church. This wasn’t just a PR thing. The church depended on secular power for its protection. Bishops around the edges of the Frankish dominions may have wondered how much more reliable would be the protection of a committed Clovis than that of the merely tolerant Theodoric?
Meanwhile the end of the Acacian Schism had made relations with Constantinople much easier, but the benefit of that easy relationship went more to the church and its primary patrons – the native nobility – than it did to Theodoric. Increased communication between eastern and western Roman aristocrats gradually widened the divide between the Roman and Gothic factions at Theodoric’s court. Peter Heather suggests that the presence of this factionalism might be one reason that Theodoric always held back from declaring himself the restored Augustus. Such action might have irritated not just the Eastern Emperor, but also the Gothic party, proud of their own heritage as separate from the Romans, and which was also the more heavily armed of the factions.
Pandering to his Goths may also explain the hoops Cassiodorus was squeezing himself through as he worked to reconstruct the genealogy of the Amals in his History of the Goths. And there was also the religious angle, just to make everything a little extra raw. Eutharic’s death exacerbated the problems, because now there was that most dangerous of things, a power vacuum, and factions formed within factions hoping to fill it.
This sense of paranoia, that the Roman aristocracy who had served Theodoric for so many years, might be turning their backs and looking toward the east, while everyone was maneuvering to be top tog once the old man kicked off, contributed to an atmosphere where personal rivalries or ambitions could spiral quickly out of control. That may partly explain the sequence of events leading up to Boethius’ imprisonment and execution. We would expect the Theodoric that we’ve seen up til now to have investigated the charges more fully, to be more skeptical, but that Theodoric seemed to be fading away.
Theodoric’s own tolerance also worked against him in his internal relations. As an adherent of a minority religion himself, Theodoric had a good relationship with Italy’s Jewish community, and usually backed them up in conflicts with the Catholic majority. Very laudable, of course, but it irritated that majority. The Catholic church becoming stronger through the resolution of the Acacian schism, and the Catholic gains on his borders, may have preyed on Theodoric’s mind, and helped to develop a siege mentality among the Goths.
Everything he had worked for seemed to be falling apart, he was beginning to feel his age, he felt his people turning against him. In desperation, he began to lash out.
The turn as related by Anonymous Valesianus is quite abrupt. According to the chronicle it was accompanied by supernatural omens, the kind that were usually reported before the downfall of kings or other great tragedies. In this case there’s the appearance of a comet, earthquake, and the birth to a Gothic woman of four snakes, two of which ascended into the sky.
I don’t know what to tell you, man.
Some of the so-called tyranny as reported sounds to us like good, impartial kingship, and here’s where Theodoric’s relationship with the Jews comes in again. Though he expressed disbelief that anyone could consciously reject the offer of salvation through Christ, he famously pointed out that he could not “force men to believe against their will”. That was a point that a fairly large number of characters in the future of this podcast will work strenuously to disprove. The result of Theodoric’s tolerance was that Synagogues were considered private property and were protected as such by law. The catholic population often saw tolerance as collusion between Jew and Arian, so the heresy of an official is always made special note of whenever a ruling involving Jewish and Christian goes against the latter.
In one specific instance in Ravenna, when the Jews “being unwilling to be baptized, often in sport threw the holy water that was offered to them into the water of the river”, which is cheeky, though it sounds like the Christians were being a little pushy, coming at the Jews, holy water in hand. The desecration of the holy water had a predictable effect. “The people were fired with anger, and without respect for the king, [the consul], or [the bishop], they rose against the synagogues and presently set them on fire.”
Here’s where the bias of the chronicler becomes especially obvious: “Presently the Jews hastened to Verona, where the king was, and there the head-chamberlain Triwane acted on their behalf; he, too, as a heretic favored the Jews, and cajoled the king into taking action against the Christians. Accordingly, on the presumption that they had committed arson,” my guy, not two sentences ago, you described what was very obviously arson, “the entire Roman population should furnish money for the rebuilding of the synagogues in Ravenna… and that those who had nothing from which they could give should be whipped through the streets of the city…” Okay, so the response seems a little harsh, collective punishment and all that, but considering that there was no mechanism to investigate the case to assign specific blame, it isn’t that surprising. The whipping thing also leaves a lot to be desired. We also have to remember though, is that this stage the chronicler, whoever he is, is trying to make a case for the tyranny of Theodoric, and the real issue is that he sided with the Jews against the Christians, even though the Crhistians in question were clearly guilty of arson.
The point of all this is that tensions were high.
The king’s paranoia was out in force in Theodoric’s dealings with his latest pope, John I. John was sent on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople on Theodoric’s behalf. Among other things, he was to negotiate better treatment for Arians in the Eastern Empire. An odd mission on which to be sending the Catholic Pontiff. Even more odd was the instruction to demand that those who had converted from Arianism to Catholic Orthodoxy should be “restored” to their old faith. That seems spookily close to forcing people to believe something by force, but what do I know? John was welcomed to the capital with open arms, and seems to have gotten along with everyone just fine and had a high old time. He was fairly successful at reducing the temperature of persecution, less so at reversing Arian conversions. I have to think he didn’t try very hard on that one. John stayed for a few months in Constantinople, longer than Theodoric had expected, and word of the chummy relationship between the pope and the imperial court filtered their way back to the king.
Theodoric by that stage was deeply sunk in the pit of suspicion. He saw his pope’s closeness with the imperial court as collusion against him, and when John returned to italy, Theodoric had him thrown in prison. The pontiff died there, possibly starved to death, a few months later. His successor was hand-picked by the king, Felix IV. Felix pushed for greater privileges for Catholics in Italy. Given the situation, that might have gone poorly for him, but Theodoric was on his last legs, and less than two months after Felix’s accession, the king died.
There are a few versions of how. Procopius’ is the most colorful, with a neat little connection to the unjust execution of Symmachus and Boethius: “While he was dining, the servants set before him the head of a great fish. This seemed to Theodoric to be the head of Symmachus newly slain. Indeed, with its teeth set in its lower lip and its eyes looking at him with a grim and insane stare, it did resemble exceedingly a person threatening him. And becoming greatly frightened at the extraordinary prodigy and shivering excessively, he retired running to his own chamber, and bidding them place many covers on him, remained quiet. But afterwards he disclosed to his physician .. all that had happened and wept for the wrong he had done Symmachus and Boethius. Then having lamented and grieved exceedingly over the unfortunate occurrence, he died not long afterward.” Not sure if Symmachus would have appreciated the comparison, but hey, Procopius is trying to paint a picture.
The Valeseianus is a bit more vicious, but also probably more accurate about the cause of death: “[it was announced] on an appointed day … that on the following Sabbath the Arians would take possession of all the Catholic Churches. But He who does not allow his faithful worshippers to be oppressed by unbelievers soon brought upon Theodoric the same punishment that Arius, the founder of his religion, had suffered, for the king was seized with a diarrhea, and after three days of open bowels lost both his throne and his life on the very same day on which he rejoiced to attack the churches.”
However it happened, Theodoric died on the 30th of August, 526. He was 72 years old. He’d been king of the Ostrogoths for 52 years, of Italy for 33, and over-lord of the combined gothic realm for 15 years. Before he died, he named his grandson Athalaric as his successor, with Amalasuintha as regent. We’ll come back to them in later episodes.
Theodoric had also made provision for his mortal remains. His mausoleum still stands in Ravenna, and is one of the most striking of the city’s monuments. It is fashioned of hard white limestone with minimal ornamentation, it stands in spartan contrast to the gilded mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Note that I said striking, not most beautiful, in truth it is a little austere, a little off in the proportions department, but it is still a fascinating and fantastic structure. It consists of two levels, each decagonal, with the space below perhaps originally functioning as a chapel and the upper chamber the actual site of Theodoric’s internment. The domed roof is a single piece of stone, presumably placed with the aid of earthen ramps, though no one knows for sure. There’s a Greek cross inscribed on the bottom, interior surface. There are some remnants of color on the cross, which must have made it quite a focal point.
Theodoric’s sarcophagus is carved from a single piece of porphyry. It’s usually described on a scale between “bathtub-like” at one end and, “yeah, that’s just a re-used bathtub” on the other. I’m curious about how it might have been covered, whether it had a fitted lid, but haven’t seen anything about that one way or another. I recognize that I’m straying into discussions of architecture and visual art, always good on a podcast. I will put pictures on the website and on instagram, but it’s not hard to find images online if you are so inclined.
I read a paper that suggested that the windows, which are all of different sizes, line up with various astronomical events, the equinoxes, etc. Personally I’m unconvinced, there are seventeen windows in all, and it seems to me with seventeen windows in a round building, it would be more surprising if some of them didn’t line up with the sun on significant days. There is though a cross-shaped window on the east side, which illuminates a clear spot on the opposite wall on the feast day of the annunciation, and that’s pretty neat.
Theodoric is no longer there, unfortunately, his bones were scattered at some point, presumably during the Byzantine reconquest of Italy … is it possible to spoil history? Which was an indignity he surely didn’t deserve.
So what do we think?
I don’t think it’s possible, at the end of all of this, to be unimpressed. Theodoric had taken a band of barbarian warriors, and despite Jordane’s protestations, a fairly beleaguered band at that, and led them through the mire of Eastern Politics. He had outmaneuvered Strabo and ridden the waves of Zeno’s rise and fall and rise again. His military record was not spotless, but obviously, he ultimately came out on top in the war with Odoacer, and against the Vandals, and was able at least to stop the advance of Frankish power before they reached the Mediterranean Coast.
He was capable of brutality, obviously. The killing of Odoacer over dinner is off-putting, but there was no way any kind of power sharing arrangement could have worked; it would have inevitably come to murder in the end anyway. Equally off-putting, and probably less justifiable, was the execution of Boethius and his father in law. All the sources comment on it, (except the Variae) and it was absolutely a black mark on Theodoric’s historical reputation. Immediately after his death, his more recent transgressions gave birth to legends of his soul being taken by demonic horses directly to hell, but after a few years, with perspective, the evaluations of his reign were largely positive, even in the East. Procopius, whose histories we will be using a lot in later episodes, summed him up thus:
“Although he did not claim the right to assume either the garb or the name of Emperor of the Romans, but was called rex until the end of his life… still, in governing his own subjects, he invested himself with all the qualities which appropriately belong to one who is by birth and emperor. He was exceedingly careful to observe justice, he preserved the laws on a sure basis, he protected the land and kept it safe from the barbarians dwelling roundabout, and attained the highest possible degree of wisdom and manliness.”
Procopius notes the executions of Symmachus and Boethius as the only acts of injustice that Thedoric committed in all his reign, and makes no mention of the various sins detailed in the Valesianus. Even Valesianus allows that, before the devil came into him, Theodoric “was ruling the state well and without complaint.” Grudgingly positive, I think we could say.
The largely positive view predominates among modern historians too. All historians must take the nature of the surviving sources into account. We’ve already talked at some length about the context of the Variae, and Cassiodorus’ History via Jordanes. There’s also the bishop of Pavia, Ennodius, who wrote a panegyric to the king, which by definition is not going to be an unbiased critical analysis. The Valesianus is actually the most balanced, in that it’s not explicitly a work of praise, but that doesn’t make it any more reliable or complete. The modern reaction to these realities is either to note them and urge caution, or to downplay them as plain old propaganda. Many of them comment on the two Theodorics; the successful but not particularly exceptional Gothic war leader of his early career, and the nearly imperial ruler of Italy, and most historical debate revolves around that dichotomy.
In 1881 Thomas Hodgkin accepted the transformation with wonder and admiration. “[We have marked] his strange vacillations between friendship and enmity to the great civilized empire … wherein he and his people were dwelling, and neither concealed nor extenuated any of his lawless deeds, least of all that act of treachery and violence by which he finally climbed to the pinnacle of supreme power in Italy. ../ For the next thirty years, we … watch the career of this same man ruling Italy with unquestioned justice and wise forethought, making the welfare of every class of his subjects the end of all his endeavors, and cherishing civilization … with a love and devotion almost equal to that which religious zeal kindles in the hearts of its surrendered votaries.”
More recent histories tend to be less effusive, but still largely fall on the positive side.
Herwig Wolfram acknowledged Theodoric’s debt to the administrative foundation laid by Odoacer’s land settlements, but points out that “After the disorders of the fifth century, Italy and its neighboring provinces found peace for a t least a generation/ Theodoric accomplished not only the preservation of peace against domestic and foreign enemies but even succeeded in reconquering roman provinces. Even though the territorial acquisitions were modest, Theodoric’s policy of restoration left a lasting impression.” The barbarian king proclaimed himself, on coins, the “ruler and conqueror of barbarians.”
Peter Heather emphasizes Theodoric’s military achievements, and especially the achievement of creating what was essentially a new ethnic group out of the wreckage of Attila’s empire, and then taking it to such impressive heights of success. “From highly ragged beginnings, Theodoric managed to knit the various components together into a a highly effective military machine…The strength of their loyalty to him, and the overall power that he had welded together, shows up in the extent to which this army allowed theodoric to dominated at least the eastern mediterranean een before the visigoths were added to his musters. This was no mean achievement given the massively disparate origins of his army and … the group identity of the army he created was extremely durable.”
The one dissenting voice which I’ll note here, that of Sean Lafferty, uses a work I haven’t talked about, the Edictum Theodorici. The Edict is a code of laws dating to the sixth century. It clearly relates to a kingdom with a dual nature, of Goths and of Romans, the problem is it’s not clear which Theodoric issued it, Theodoric the Great of Italy, or the earlier Visigoth, Theodoric II. I’m not qualified to make a judgment on that debate, so I’ve left it out. Lafferty connects it to the Rule of Theodoric the Great, and in the administrative realities reflected in the Edict, finds some evidence that all was not sweetness and light in Theodoric’s Italy. The gloss applied by Cassiodorus and Ennodius cannot be taken at face value in Lafferty’s mind, and the whole impression we have of wise king Theodoric is a kind of sleight of hand, aided by cunning Roman rhetoric. In the Edict, not much is changed from the state of law and justice in the late empire, meaning that it was heavily biased toward the rich and the powerful. While his propaganda stresses Theodoric’s commitment to justice for all, structurally he did nothing to root out the causes of injustices or improve the lives of his subjects beyond the narrow bands of the very wealthiest Romans, and the Gothic military elite.
Those biases, especially the structures that worked to the advantage of the military elite, led to increasing militarization of the society of Italy. We can argue with Lafferty about whether or not that constitutes a Bad Thing, but it was certainly a Thing. After Theodoric’s death, Amalasuintha and her son would find themselves under pressure from the increasingly powerful Gothic factions (i.e. the military factions), pressure which would ultimately lead to the collapse and invasion of the Ostrogothic kingdom. But that story is for later.
That brings us to the end of Theodoric the Great, and time for a change of scenery. Next episode will be a theme one, like the one on War that I started the season with, and I’m going to keep the topic secret for the moment, just because I can, and I feel like it. After that will be time to talk in more depth about the man who I’ve presented as a villain the last few episodes, Clovis, king of the Franks.
My heartfelt thanks to you all for coming back after wading through the Acacian Schism with me. I felt as if I’d been thoroughly beaten with a bag of oranges by the time I finished writing that one, hopefully the listening experience was different.
Thanks to AVJeff, Heath Ro, Anthony, and UgoSchmid for leaving reviews. Anthony, no, I did mean uninterested. Ugo wondered why more people don’t talk about the show, and I also wonder that, but I’m temperamentally not very good at self-promotion, so the answer is probably there. If you would like to correct that clear imbalance in the force, please do tell your friends, or if you don’t care for the show and you somehow listened to this whole episode anyway, why not tell an enemy about it? Alternatively, you can always rate and review. And if you’d like, you can offer material support through ko-fi.com, at ko-fi.com/darkagespod. Like the tip jar at your favorite local, organic, fair-trade, coffee co-op, contributions are never expected, but always appreciated.
That will do it for this episode. Until next time, take care.
Sources:
Anonymous Valesianus. 2020. “Excerpta Valesiana.” LacusCurtius • Excerpta Valesiana — Latter Part. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Excerpta_Valesiana/2*.html.
Cassiodorus. 1886. The Letters of Cassiodorus: Being a Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. Translated by Thomas Hodgkin. London: Henry Frowe. https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18590/pg18590-images.html.
Hodgkin, Thomas. 1891. Theodoric the Great: Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20063/pg20063-images.html.
Lavoratti, Gaia, and Manuela Incerti. 2019. “The Mausoleum of Theodoric: Archaeoastronomy, Numbers, Geometry and Communication.” In Archaeoastronomy in the Roman World, edited by Juan Belmonte Aviles, Giulio Magli, Antonio C. González-García, and Elio Antonello. N.p.: Springer International Publishing.
Procopius. n.d. The Complete Procopius Anthology: The Wars of Justinian, The Secret History of the Court of Justinian, The Buildings of Justinian. N.p.: Bybliotech. Accessed March 26, 2023.
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