undermined the power of the Visigothic kings, despite their frantic attempts to court support by issuing Roman law codes, and facilitated their defeat at the hands of the newly converted king of the Franks, Clovis, at Vouillé near Tours in 507. Thenceforth the Visigothic kingdom was confined to Spain apart from a small salient north of the Pyrenees in Septimania. The smoothness of the Visigoths' withdrawal into Spain was made possible by the intervention of the Ostrogothic king, Theoderic, who became the most powerful barbarian monarch in the western Mediterranean after seizing Italy from Odoacer in 493. He is also the most interesting, since he combined capable war-leadership and an appreciation of the need to retain the identity of his people with a calculated admiration for the benefits of Roman civilization derived from his own experience of Constantinople as a hostage.
This 'dual' approach provided for lavish patronage of public works, the promotion of economic activity and the safeguarding of Roman customs, especially those of the Senate, whose support he cultivated to reinforce the legitimacy of his rule. His own people were kept segregated in settlements in north and central Italy under their own commanders, while the central and local administration was entrusted to Roman collaborators such as Cassiodorus, a senator from a parvenu Calabrian family. However, Theoderic's position as the leader of a small heterodox people was always vulnerable, and towards the end of his reign uncharacteristically severe measures taken against the Roman population can be attributed to fears concerning the succession and the diplomatic noose which the Byzantines were tightening around his kingdom. Reconciliation between the Roman Church and the aggressively orthodox emperors of the east, combined with the nostalgic yearning of conservative senators for Roman rule, gave rise to suspicions of treasonable negotiations with Constantinople, which in turn led to the notorious episode of the arrest and execution of the philosopher Boethius.
For much of the fifth century the eastern empire had seemed destined to fall into a decline similar to that of the west. Its last representatives of the Theodosian house were equally incap-
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