"[1]
[Footnote 1: Hodgkin, _Theodoric_ (Putnam, 1900), pp. 307-308.]
Amalasuntha was forced to bow to this, the public opinion of her own
people. The result was disastrous; for the young Athalaric, like a
true barbarian, was soon led away into a bestial sensuality which
presently destroyed his health and sent him to an early grave. Seeing
his instability both of body and mind, Amalasuntha entered into secret
communication with Constantinople, where Justinian was now emperor,
and even prepared for a possible flight to that city. Thus in 534,
when she received an ambassador in Ravenna from Justinian who demanded
of her the surrender of Lilybaeum, a barren rock in Sicily which
Theodoric had assigned to Thrasamund on his marriage with his sister
Amalafrida, in public she protested vigorously against the attempt of
the emperor to pick a quarrel with "an orphaned king" too young to
defend himself; but in private she assured the imperial ambassador of
her readiness "to transfer to the emperor the whole of Italy."
Italy was in this unstable state when, on the 2nd October 534,
Athalaric died in his eighteenth year.
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