The Heroine and the Historian 309
and just ruler, he nonetheless takes every opportunity to present her as a help-
less heroine.
The historian achieves this, Frankforter argues, by looking for love interest
and for rivalry among women wherever he can find it. He thus identifies the
empress Theodora as the culprit behind Amalasuentha’s murder, suggesting
that the empress encouraged Theodahad to kill Amalasuentha by indicating
that her husband Justinian would turn a blind eye if he did so. Having indi-
cated the method, the historian also offers a motive. Theodora, he suggests,
was made jealous by the possibility that the Gothic queen might replace her
as empress.56 The view of Theodora here is consistent with Procopius’ more
sustained treatment in the Secret History.57
Frankforter brings evidence from the contemporary letter-book of
Cassiodorus to show that the charge may have contained a distorted element
of truth. Theodora was indeed in correspondence with Theodahad’s wife
Gudelina around the time of Amalasuentha’s murder.58 Theodahad seems to
have underestimated the danger that Justinian would seize on any harm done
to Amalasuentha as a pretext for invading Italy, and it is not impossible that
Theodora and Gudelina played a role in leading him to make this mistake.
But it is unlikely that their motive was one of romance or sexual jealousy. It is
more likely, Frankforter suggests, that the wives of Theodahad and Justinian
were serving as a back channel for their husbands’ efforts to second-guess one
another’s intentions.
In other words, the murder of Amalasuentha was the result of a cat-and-
mouse game in which tension between the Goths and Romans over territorial
control spun out of control thanks to rivarly within the Amal family over who
would rule the Goths. On this reading, the queen tried and failed to establish a
new coalition strong enough to fend off the eastern empire’s westward expan-
sion. At the same time her cousin Theodehad in his ambition fell prey to a
trap laid by the emperor and his wife. If this reading is correct, then Procopius
is more than a little disingenuous in portraying Amalasuentha as a loyal ally
of Rome whose murder left Justinian no honourable alternative other than to
invade Italy. Indeed Procopius may be trying to draw a veil over the fact that
the queen in fact died trying to defend Italy from Justinian’s predatory interest
in the western territories.
56 Procopius, Secret History 16.5, with Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, pp. 49–50.
57 Kaldellis, Secret History, p. liii, suggests that Procopius’ Amalasuentha may even be
intended as an “anti-Theodora”.
58 Frankforter, “Amalasuntha”, p. 50.