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In 526, the great Ostrogothic king Theoderic died in his capital city of Ravenna and was buried just outside its walls. From his own day to the present, the extraordinary structure in which he was buried has been considered one of his most remarkable achievements (Fig. 1).1 The Anonymus Valesianus, written in the decades after Theoderic's death, points out the features that are still considered worthy of notice today: "While yet living he made himself a tomb (monimentum) of squared stone, a work of marvelous size, and he sought out a huge rock which he placed atop it."2 Theoderic probably intended this structure to echo the famous tombs of past rulers, while at the same time testifying to his own unique greatness. But which rulers, precisely, was Theoderic channeling? The mausoleum's unique features, unknown from any other previous or contemporary monument, have made it the subject of much speculative interpretation. Some have wanted to see it as a "Roman" monument, whereas others have read it as something anti-Roman and therefore "Gothic"; it is possible that this ambiguity, which was so much a part of Theoderic's political ideology, was intentional. Certainly its strange constellation of features has infl uenced reactions to it down to the present.3 This study will suggest another layer of meaning for this monument, namely that Theoderic intended it to emulate the most famous funerary monument of antiquity, the tomb of the ancient ruler Mausolus of Halicarnassus. This structure was extant in Theoderic's day and was widely known to ancient and medieval authors as one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." This argument is based not upon formal architectural and decorative characteristics, but instead upon the contemporary description of the monument and the literary and ideological milieu in which Theoderic's tomb was conceived and created. Rather than simply building something to appeal to Roman and/or Gothic tastes, Theoderic was building a monument for the ages.
Theoderic's monimentum
Let us fi rst examine Theoderic's monimentum and its unique elements. The structure is a centrally planned building with two stories; each storey is visually articulated on the exterior and has a vaulted chamber on the interior, cruciform in the lower level and circular in the upper. Centrally...