The Grain Merchant

Tessera - Gold In the king’s new chapel, every morning, the sunlight through the high windows shone on the gold pieces of the mosaic, the tesserae, around the images and the intricate Eastern garments of Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar, glittering in splendor. At every Arian liturgy, the congregation chanted, “Long life to Theoderic,” forty times. The old king ruled his People and the Romans of Italy with impartial care. It was rumored, and probably true, that under the soft cushions on his throne lay a human skin to remind him that his judgment had the power of life and death. His ten-year captivity in Constantinople under the Emperor Zeno inspired his knowledge of palace architecture and dissenting courtiers but had little bearing on his tenuous connection to the present Emperor Anastasius. He ruled Italy from his palace in Ravenna in the North. In the South, life went on without much care from the king. Few of the king’s People lived there; Italians were Romans, and Greeks, and Syrians. The Church worshipped the Holy Trinity, and bishops raised money with a thriving slave trade. The governor of Bruttium, breadbasket to the North, was young and venal. Occasionally the Prime Minister, a Roman southerner by birth, sent a letter of rebuke from the king, which was largely ignored. Local patricians lived comfortably and ran the local government through a council that imitated the Senate in Rome. The council selected a magistrate every two years. A treasurer kept track of local monies and duly sent taxes to the governor, who sent them on to the king. Crops and livestock—olives, wine, grain, fresh fruit, cattle, and horses all went north to support the king’s country of Italy. As long as harvest went well, money flowed, and the area prospered.