The festivities which celebrated Theodoric's visit to the Eternal City were perhaps somewhat discordantly interrupted by the discovery of a conspiracy against him, set on foot by a certain Count Odoin, about whom we have no other information, but the form of whose name at once suggests that he was of Gothic, not Roman, extraction. It is possible that this conspiracy indicates the discontent of the old Gothic nobility with the increasing tendency to copy Roman civilisation and to assume Imperial prerogatives which they observed in the king who had once been little more than chief among a band of comrades. But we have not sufficient information as to this conspiracy to enable us to fix its true place in the history of Theodoric, nor can we even say with confidence that it was directed against the king and not against one of his ministers. The result alone is certain. Odoin's treachery was discovered and he was beheaded in the Sessorian palace, a building which probably stood upon the patrimony of Constantine, hard by the southern wall of Rome, and near to the spot where we now see the Church of Santa Croce.
At the request of the people, the words of Theodoric's harangue on his entrance into the City were engraved on a brazen tablet, which was fixed in a place of public resort, perhaps the Roman Forum. Even so did the _Joyeuse Entrée_ of a Burgundian duke into Brussels confirm and commemorate the privileges of his good subjects the citizens of Brabant. Upon the whole, there can be little doubt that the half-year which Theodoric spent in Rome was really a time of joyfulness both to prince and people, and that the tiles which are still occasionally turned up by the spade in Rome, bearing the inscription "Domino Nostro Theodorico Felix Roma", were not merely the work of official flatterers, but did truly express the joy of a well-governed nation. After six months Theodoric returned to that city, which, during the last thirty years of his life, he probably regarded as his home--Ravenna by the Adriatic,--and there he delighted the heart of his subjects by the pageants which celebrated the marriage of his niece Amalaberga with Hermanfrid, the king of the distant Thuringians. This young prince, whom Theodoric had adopted as his "son by right of arms" [118] had sent to his future kinsman a team of cream-coloured horses of a rare breed,[119] and Theodoric sent in return horses, swords and shields, and other instruments of war, but, as he said, "the greatest requital that we make is joining you in marriage to a woman of such surpassing beauty as our niece".