Anyone who had witnessed the violent beginning of his reign could hardly have hoped that the ostracized, bloodstained Theodoric would be the one to usher in decades of calm and stability. This book offers the exciting story of how he knew that a clever division of labor would create an accord between his two peoples—the Goths handled the military tasks and the Romans managed the civilian life and the payment of taxes. The secret of his success, which the author of this modern biography has convincingly decoded, was achieving integration through separation! Even after 1,500 years, it is fascinating to see how Theodoric maintained peace in spite of the great potential for internal and external conflict over questions of faith and church organization, between warriors and civilians, in relations with the Emperor in Constantinople and the Teutonic kings in the West, and pressing social problems.