clergy, and people to unite in electing a new Pope. After eight days
Hormisdas the Campanian sat in the Chair of St. Peter, an undoubted
Pontiff.

[Sidenote: Deference to the Roman Senate.]

Not only in maintaining the dignity of the Consulship, but also in
treating the Roman Senate with every outward show of deference and
respect, did the Ostrogothic King follow and even improve upon the
example of the Roman Emperors. The student of the following letters
will observe the tone of deep respect which is almost always adopted
towards the Senate; how every nomination of importance to an official
post is communicated to them, almost as if their suffrages were
solicited for the new candidate; what a show is made of consulting
them in reference to peace and war; and what a reality there seems to
be in the appeals made to their loyalty to the new King after the
death of Theodoric. In all this, as in the whole relation of the
Empire to the Senate during the five centuries of their joint
existence, it is difficult to say where well-acted courtesy ended, and
where the desire to secure such legal power as yet remained to a
venerable assembly began. Perhaps when we remember that for many
glorious centuries the Senate had been the real ruler of the Roman
State, we may assert that the attitude and the language of the
successors of Augustus towards the Conscript Fathers were similar to
those used by a modern House of Commons towards the Crown, only that
in the one case the individual supplanted the assembly, in the other
the assembly supplanted the individual. But whatever the exact
relations between King and Senate may have been, and though
occasionally the former found it necessary to rebuke the latter pretty
sharply for conduct unbecoming their high position, there can be no