Charles William Chadwick Oman

“Rhodes had fallen into their hands, and the long-prostrate Colossus had been sold for old brass to a Jewish dealer, and exported to Syria to be melted down.””

“Considering the tenor of the whole of Theodoric’s previous life, it is most improbable that he had any such wild scheme of intolerance in hand. But he had certainly grown gloomy, suspicious, and hard in his declining days, and it was well for his own fame, as well as for his subjects, that he was carried off by dysentery not long after the death of Pope John. It would have been still better, both for king and people, had the end come three years earlier, before his first harsh dealings with Boethius. His unpopularity at the moment of his death is shown by the survival of several curious legends, which tell how holy hermits saw his soul dragged down to hell by the injured ghosts of John and Symmachus, or carried off by the fiend himself.””

“the diarist very wisely writes, “one could not be too guarded in one’s conduct with such heroes.”{201}””