298 Cooper
cowardly and submissive spirit.”5 It was the queen’s attempt to accommodate
these critics that led to her allowing her control of her son’s education to be
challenged. This, the historian suggests, was her first error.
After some time the young king died, and the queen now made her second
and fatal error. Instead of choosing a ranking Amal warrior to act as her pro-
tector and marrying him, she invited a classically educated male relative, her
elderly cousin Theodahad, to act as her fraternal consort, ignoring clear evi-
dence of his despicable character. Up to this point she had managed to contain
the ambitions of the Gothic nobles and to invoke the prospect of the emperor
Justinian’s wrath as a credible threat to her challengers. But Theodahad was
able to outwit her and colluding with her enemies had her murdered. This in
turn gave an opening to Justinian. According to Procopius the emperor saw
it as no less than his duty to avenge the fallen queen. So he sent his general
Belisarius to invade first Sicily and then the Italian mainland.6
In telling the story, Procopius differs remarkably from the Gothic memory
of the same events. Jordanes made an abridgement of Cassiodorus’ lost Gothic
5 Procopius, Wars 5.2.12: “γράμματά τε γὰρ παρὰ πολὺ κεχωρίσθαι ἀνδρίας, καὶ διδασκαλίας
γερόντων ἀνθρώπων ἔς τε τὸ δειλὸν καὶ ταπεινὸν ἀποκρίνεσθαι ἐκ τοῦ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον.”
6 Procopius, Wars 5.5.8–9.
FIGURE 12.1 Genealogical chart of the Ostrogothic Amal family
Chart by Kate Cooper