2 JANUARY 1886, Page 25

BOOKS.

ITALY AND HER INVADERS.*

AFTER a lapse of five years, Mr. Hodgkin here presents us with two more volumes of his great work on the invaders of Italy ; and they can hardly fail, in spite of Alboin and the Lombards, to be the most fascinating of the series. They deal with the Ostrogothic invasion of Italy and the Imperial restoration ; they tell once more those stories the centres of which are Theodoric and Totila, Belisarius and Narses, and than these the history of the world presents none more romantic. The more light that is thrown upon the career of Belisarius, indeed, the more obvious it is that—even if we discard the " obolas " legend, which Mr. Hodgkin in effect does—it was the sac& extraordinary and varied in the whole annals of military achievement. He had to play the parts of Hannibal, Omar, and Marlborough, and some of his achievements were equal to theirs. Yet, as when hard pressed in Rome, he had to resort to devices of the kind with which Gordon's defence of Khartoum has made us familiar ; and his latest service to his (apparently) ungrateful master, Justinian, consisted in his preventing Byzantium from falling a prey to a barbarian horde, by tricks which recall the peculiar ingenuity of Dundonald. Happily, perhaps, it will never be quite pos- sible to dispel entirely the mist of romance and myth which enshrouds the memory of Belisarius. But if this work can be accomplished at all, it will be by Mr. Bryce, when, if ever, "his Parliamentary labours," as Mr. Hodgkin puts it, "shall allow him to pluck the fruit which has long been ripening," and to publish his history of Justinian. We are glad, rather than otherwise, to learn that Mr. Bryce takes a more favourable view of both Justinian and Theodora than do most writers on this period, because the character of the Byzantine Emperor is the most irritating puzzle in all history, and nothing could be more welcome than a key to it. In any case, when Mr. Bryce, as well as Mr. Hodgkin, has had his say, the last satisfactory word by way of supplement to, rather than correction of, Gibbon will have been uttered.

Critics of Mr. Hodgkin should be more than ordinarily grateful to him ; he is so frank, so modest, so painstaking, so open to new light, so fresh, almost to boyishness, in style. Following advice, he has, in this instalment of his book, devoted more attention to the affairs of the Church and of the Eastern Empire than in the previous one, even although he says that " artistically the book probably suffers by the breaks thus caused in the main course of the narrative." In his former volumes he had spelt the name of one of his leading authorities on Gothic history Jornandes. But he accepts the arguments of Professor Mommsen in favour of Jordanes, urged in 1882, when he issued the standard edition of "this in- dispensable but irritating writer." So desirous is he to do • Italy and her Invaders. By Thomas H. Hodgkin, D.0 L. Vol,. III. and IV. The Ostrogothic Invasion and the Imperial Restoration. Clarendon Press. 1855.

justice to Professor Felix Dahn, of Konigsberg, and his truly admirable work on The Kings of the Germans, that be almost goes too far, as when he says :—" Occasionally the reader will discover in a foot-note a hinted doubt as to the correctness of some small point on which Dahn has expressed an opinion.

.Wherever this occurs, he may safely conjecture that the main propositions in the text come from Dahn's work, and are affirmed with confi,lence on his authority." Yet the originality of Mr. Hodgkin's work is apparent on the face of it ; he seems to'be perpetually going abaut, Cassiodorus or Procopius in hand, engaged in the work of "verifying." Mr. Hodgkin's style is admirably suited to do justice to his present narrative. It deals to the extent of three-fourths with campaigns and battles. Of these he writes with Homeric gusto, and he even indulges in Homeric phrases of the familiar .roxt%Fm-r; order, such as " deep-thoughted " and " many-g,eneralled." He has also a Macaulayan love of combining the picturesque with the historical, as in this passage descriptive of the scene of the decisive battle between Narses and Totila, about which we gather from him that Mr. Bryce will have something fresh to say :—

" Here, then, upon the Flaminian Way, but high up in the heart of the Apennines, must be fought the battle which was to decide once and for ever the embittered quarrel between the nations of the Ostrogoths and Eastern Rome. The place is worthy to be the theatre of great events. It is close to 'the House of Two Waters,' from which flows on one side a stream that eventually swells the waters of the Tiber and passes out into the Tyrrhene Sea ; on the other, the torrent of the Burano, which pours itself through rocky defiles north. ward to the Hadriatic. The valley itself is a sort of long trough, sloping gradually towards the south. On the eastern aide, with their summits for the most part invisible from this point, rise some of the greatest mountains of the Apennine chain,—snow-crowned Monte Cucco, Monte Catria, with its grand buttress, Monte Corno, Monte Strega, looking like a witch's hand with five skinny fingers pointing upwards to the:sky. On the opposite side of the valley, upon our right as we look towards Rome, rises a lower but more picturesque range of hills. These sharp-serrated summits, so clearly defined against the sunset sky,-are'Monte S. Ubaldo and Monte Calve, the mountains of Gubbio. At their base, hidden from us, because on the other side of them, lies the little city of Gubbio, dear to scholars for its precious Eugnbine Tables, which enshrine the language of ancient Umbria, and dear to painters for the frescoes of Nelli, one of the most reverent of the artists of Umbria."

Mr. Hodgkin has an eye also for the moral picturesque, as is shown by such a sentence as this from his admirable chapter on St. Benedict and his Itegula :—

"Thus, by a strange parallelism, almost in the very year when the great Emperor Justinian was codifying the results of seven centuries of Roman secular legislation for the benefit of the judges and states- men of the new Europe, St. Benedict on his lonely mountain top was unconsciously composing his code for the regulation of the daily life of the great civilisers of Europe for seven centuries to come."

But we hardly think the style of such outbursts of humanity as the following over the assassination of Odovacar, in good taste :—

" No ! It was not well done by thee, descendant of so many Amal Kings Whatever a mere Roman Emperor, a crowned upstart of yesterday, might do in breaking faith with his rivals, a Basilicas or an Armatius, thou shouldest have kept thy Teutonic truth in- violate. And so, when we enter that wonderful cenotaph of the Middle Ages, the Church of the Franciscans at Innsbritck, and see thee standing there, in size more than human, beside the bearers of the greatest names in chivalry, Fraukish Charles and British Arthur, and Godfrey with the crown of thorns, one memory, and hardly more than one, prevents our classing thee with the purest and the noblest of them,—the memory of thy assassinated rival, Odovacar."

Mr. Hodgkin's volumes have not the great though frosty literary brilliance of Gibbou's, nor their attractive though specious philosophy. But they may be more cordially recom- mended to the ordinary student.

The more extraordinary of the two stories that in effect Mr.

Hodgkin here tells, is that of Justinian, the more satisfactory that of Theodoric. Of all men who have played an important part in the history of the world, Justinian is surely the most inexplicable on any recognised principles of character-study. He seems to have been a weak and even pusillanimous man, yet

he was able to discover and utilise capacity,—the genius of the young Belisarius, the sagacity alike in politics and in warfare

of the eunuch Narses, the strong will of the—unless Mr. Bryce

rehabilitates her—infamous Theodora. He probably conceived, and even through his instruments achieved, more remarkable exploits—and not in warfare alone—than any other Monarch, ancient or modern, that could be mentioned. Yet he has left nothing permanent or valuable behind him except the Civil Law. His reign was no benefit to Byzantium. His reconquest of Italy from the Ostrogoths was a curse to Rome. The Theodoric who conquered Odovacar, and established the Ostro- gothic kingdom in Italy, is a-much more satisfactory, because much more intelligible, personage. This Monarch, who from being the dux of a tribe of wandering Goths, became the King of Italy, and very nearly arbiter of Europe, was one of those strong and essentially Teutonic spirits of whom, perhaps, our own William the Conqueror is the best specimen. When every rival near his throne had been removed, he did his best to unite Roman order aad Gothic vigour, and so rejuvenate Italy. The Church stood in the way, and, therefore, the Romans always turned a wistful eye towards Byzantium. Theodoric tried his best to reconcile the Church through Pope John, whom he sent as an ambassador to Byzantium. But when he thought he found—probably he did find—that John was little better than a traitor, he threw him into prison, in what Mr. Hodgkin regards as a burst of Berserkir passion, and he caused the philosopher Boethius to be executed for the same reason. Thus he undoubtedly alienated the Romans immediately before his death. But it is in the highest degree probable that his work would have been completed had his successor been equal in ability to himself. But his daughter Amalsnntha, who fell heir to his power, was a Roman by sympathy and education, if not by blood and at heart, and her assassination gave the Byzantine Empire an excuse for interfer- ence in Italy. The forces of Justinian met with an inadequate resistance from the weak Witigis. Ultimately a second Ostro- gothic hero appeared in Italy in the person of Totila—strictly speaking, Baduild—but he appeared too late. The Imperial resources, which had been grudged Belisarins, were placed with- out stint at the disposal of the favourite Narses. Totila fell, and after him, though not without a gallant struggle, the Ostrogothic Monarchy in Italy.

Mr. Hodgkin makes plain the true aims of Theodoric ; and this is the supreme value of these volumes, regarded simply as an elucidation of a dark chapter in history. But Mr. Hodgkin is quite as enthusiastic in archmological and topographical as in histori- cal investigation. He revives for us the walls and ways and aqueducts of classical Rome, which, as he proves, the various sieges in the course of the struggle between Justinian and the Ostrogothic Monarchy did more than anything else to destroy. His chapter on Boethius, if a trifle too long, is an admirable illustration of his power of exposition. And if his digressions into ecclesiastical history are to be regarded as sins against art, they are intrinsically important and valuable. The relations between Theodoric and Pope John, and between Justinian and Pope Yigilius—the Arian King was not so much of a tyrant and persecutor as the orthodox Emperor--have, we may say, for the first time in English literature, been placed in their true light.