Opening
THE LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS
HODGKIN
Oxford
PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
THE
LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS
BEING
A CONDENSED TRANSLATION OF THE VARIAE EPISTOLAE OF MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS SENATOR
With an Introduction
BY
THOMAS HODGKIN
FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; HON. D.C.L. OF DURHAM UNIVERSITY AUTHOR OF 'ITALY AND HER INVADERS'
LONDON: HENRY FROWDE AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1886.
[All rights reserved]
Preface
The abstract of the 'Variae' of Cassiodorus which I now offer to the notice of historical students, belongs to that class of work which Professor Max Müller happily characterised when he entitled two of his volumes 'Chips from a German Workshop.' In the course of my preparatory reading, before beginning the composition of the third and fourth volumes of my book on 'Italy and Her Invaders,' I found it necessary to study very attentively the 'Various Letters' of Cassiodorus, our best and often our only source of information, for the character and the policy of the great Theodoric. The notes which in this process were accumulated upon my hands might, I hoped, be woven into one long chapter on the Ostrogothic government of Italy. When the materials were collected, however, they were so manifold, so perplexing, so full of curious and unexpected detail, that I quite despaired of ever succeeding in the attempt to group them into one harmonious and artistic picture. Frankly, therefore, renouncing a task which is beyond my powers, I offer my notes for the perusal of the few readers who may care to study the mutual reactions of the Roman and the Teutonic mind upon one another in the Sixth Century, and I ask these to accept the artist's assurance, 'The curtain is the picture.'
It will be seen that I only profess to give an abstract, not a full translation of the letters. There is so much repetition and such a lavish expenditure of words in the writings of Cassiodorus, that they lend themselves very readily to the work of the abbreviator. Of course the longer letters generally admit of greater relative reduction in quantity than the shorter ones, but I think it may be said that on an average the letters have lost at least half their bulk in my hands. On any important point the real student will of course refuse to accept my condensed rendering, and will go straight to the fountain-head. I hope, however, that even students may occasionally derive the same kind of assistance from my labours which an astronomer derives from the humble instrument called the 'finder' in a great observatory.
A few important letters have been translated, to the best of my ability, verbatim. In the not infrequent instances where I have been unable to extract any intelligible meaning, on grammatical principles, from the words of my author, I have put in the text the nearest approximation that I could discover to his meaning, and placed the unintelligible words in a note, hoping that my readers may be more fortunate in their interpretation than I have been.
With the usual ill-fortune of authors, just as my last sheet was passing through the press I received from Italy a number of the 'Atti e Memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna' (to which I am a subscriber), containing an elaborate and scholarlike article by S. Augusto Gaudenzi, entitled 'L'Opera di Cassiodorio a Ravenna.' It is a satisfaction to me to see that in several instances S. Gaudenzi and I have reached practically the same conclusions; but I cannot but regret that his paper reached me too late to prevent my benefiting from it more fully. A few of the more important points in which I think S. Gaudenzi throws useful light on our common subject are noticed in the 'Additions and Corrections,' to which I beg to draw my readers' attention.
I may perhaps be allowed to add that the Index, the preparation of which has cost me no small amount of labour, ought (if I have not altogether failed in my endeavour) to be of considerable assistance to the historical enquirer. For instance, if he will refer to the heading Sajo, and consult the passages there referred to, he will find, I believe, all that Cassiodorus has to tell us concerning these interesting personages, the Sajones, who were almost the only representatives of the intrusive Gothic element in the fabric of Roman administration.
From textual criticism and the discussion of the authority of different MSS. I have felt myself entirely relieved by the announcement of the forthcoming critical edition of the 'Variae,' under the superintendence of Professor Meyer. The task to which an eminent German scholar has devoted the labour of several years, it would be quite useless for me, without appliances and without special training, to approach as an amateur; and I therefore simply help myself to the best reading that I can get from the printed texts, leaving to Professor Meyer to say which reading possesses the highest diplomatic authority. Simply as a a matter of curiosity I have spent some days in examining the MSS. of Cassiodorus in the British Museum. If they are at all fair representatives (which probably they are not) of the MSS. which Professor Meyer has consulted, I should say that though the titles of the letters have often got into great confusion through careless and unintelligent copying, the main text is not likely to show any very important variations from the editions of Nivellius and Garet.
I now commend this volume with all its imperfections to the indulgent criticism of the small class of historical students who alone will care to peruse it. The man of affairs and the practical politician will of course not condescend to turn over its pages; yet the anxious and for a time successful efforts of Theodoric and his Minister to preserve to Italy the blessings of Civilitas might perhaps teach useful lessons even to a modern statesman.
THOS. HODGKIN.
NOTE.
The following Note as to the MSS. at the British Museum may save a future enquirer a little trouble.
(1) 10 B. XV. is a MS. about 11 inches by 8, written in a fine bold hand, and fills 157 folios, of which 134 belong to the 'Variae' and 23 to the 'Institutiones Divinarum Litterarum.' There are also two folios at the end which I have not deciphered. The MS. is assigned to the Thirteenth Century. The title of the First Book is interesting, because it contains the description of Cassiodorus' official rank, 'Ex Magistri Officii,' which Mommsen seems to have looked for in the MSS. in vain. The MS. contains the first Three Books complete, but only 39 letters of the Fourth. Letters 40-51 of the Fourth Book, and the whole of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Books, are missing. It then goes on to the Eighth Book (which it calls the Fifth), but omits the first five letters. The remaining 28 appear to be copied satisfactorily. The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Books, which the transcriber calls the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth, seem to be on the whole correctly copied.
There seems to be a certain degree of correspondence between the readings of this MS. and those of the Leyden MS. of the Twelfth Century (formerly at Fulda) which are described by Ludwig Tross in his 'Symbolae Criticae' (Hammone, 1853).
(2) 8 B. XIX. is a MS. also of the Thirteenth Century, in a smaller hand than the foregoing. The margins are very large, but the Codex measures only 6-3/4 inches by 4-1/4. The rubricated titles are of somewhat later date than the body of the text. The initial letters are elaborately illuminated. This MS. contains, in a mutilated state and in a peculiar order, the books from the Eighth to the Twelfth. The following is the order in which the books are placed:
IX. 8-25, folios 1-14. X. " 14-33. XI. " 33-63. XII. " 63-83. VIII. " 83-126. IX. 1-7, " 126-134.
The amanuensis, who has evidently been a thoroughly dishonest worker, constantly omits whole letters, from which however he sometimes extracts a sentence or two, which he tacks on to the end of some preceding letter without regard to the sense. This process makes it exceedingly difficult to collate the MS. with the printed text. Owing to the Eighth Book being inserted after the Twelfth, it is erroneously labelled on the back, 'Cassiodori Senatoris Epistolae, Lib. X-XIII.'
(3) 10 B. IV. (also of the Thirteenth Century, and measuring 11 inches by 8) contains, in a tolerably complete state, the first Three Books of the 'Variae,' Book IV. 5-39, Book VIII. 1-12, and Books X-XII. The order, however, is transposed, Books IV. and VIII. coming after Book XII. These excerpts from Cassiodorus, which occupy folios 66 to 134 of the MS., are preceded by some collections relative to the Civil and Canon Law. The letters which are copied seem to be carefully and conscientiously done.
These three MSS. are all in the King's Library.
Besides these MSS. I have also glanced at No. 1,919 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Like those previously described it is, I believe, of the Thirteenth Century, and professes to contain the whole of the 'Variae;' but the letters are in an exceedingly mutilated form. On an average it seems to me that not more than one-third of each letter is copied. In this manner the 'Variae' are compressed into the otherwise impossible number of 33 folios (149-182).
All these MSS., even the best of them, give me the impression of being copied by very unintelligent scribes, who had but little idea of the meaning of the words which they were transcribing. In all, the superscription V.S. is expanded (wrongly, as I believe) into 'Viro Senatori;' for 'Praefecto Praetorio' we have the meaningless 'Praeposito;' and the Agapitus who is addressed in the 6th, 32nd, and 33rd letters of the First Book is turned, in defiance of chronology, into a Pope.
I. LIFE OF CASSIODORUS
PAGE Historical position of Cassiodorus 1 His ancestry 3-4 His name 5-6 His birthplace 6-9 Date of his birth 9-12 His education 12 Consiliarius to his father 12 Quaestor 14-16 Composition of the 'Variae' 16 Their style 17-19 Policy of Theodoric 20 Date of composition of the 'Variae' 23 Consulship 25 Patriciate 27 Composition of the 'Chronicon' 27 " " Gothic History 29-35 Relation of the work of Jordanes to this History 34 Master of the Offices 36 Praetorian Praefect 39 Sketch of history during his Praefecture 42-50 End of official career 50 Edits the 'Variae' 51 His treatise 'De Animâ' 53 He retires to the cloister 54 His theological works 60-63 His literary works 64-66 His death 67 NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SQUILLACE 68-72
II. THE 'ANECDOTON HOLDERI.'
Content of the MS. 74-75 To whom addressed 76 Information as to life of Symmachus 77 " " " Boethius 79 Religious position of Boethius 81 Information as to life of Cassiodorus 84
III. THE GRADATIONS OF OFFICIAL RANK IN THE LOWER EMPIRE
Nobilissimi 85 Illustres 86-90 Spectabiles 90-91 Clarissimi 91 Perfectissimi 92 Egregii 92
IV. ON THE OFFICIUM OF THE PRAEFECTUS PRAETORIO
Military character of the Roman Civil Service 93 Sources of information 95 Princeps 96 Cornicularius 97-102 Adjutor 103 Commentariensis 104 Ab Actis 106 Numerarii 108 Inferior Officers 109-114
V. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Editions of the 'Variae' 115-118 Literature concerning the 'Variae' 118-121
VI. CHRONOLOGY
Consular Fasti 122 Indictions 123 Chronological Tables 126-130
ABSTRACT OF THE 'VARIAE.'
PREFACE 133-140
Book I
CONTAINING FORTY-SIX LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC.
1. TO EMPEROR ANASTASIUS. Persuasives to peace 141 2. " THEON. Manufacture of purple dye 143 3. " CASSIODORUS, father of the author. His praises 144 4. " SENATE. Great deeds of ancestors of Cassiodorus 145 5. " FLORIANUS. End of litigation 147 6. " AGAPITUS. Mosaics for Ravenna 147 7. " FELIX. Inheritance of Plutianus 148 8. " AMABILIS. Prodigality of Neotherius 149 9. " BISHOP EUSTORGIUS. Offences of Ecclesiastics 149 10. " BOETIUS. Frauds of moneyers 150 11. " SERVATUS. Violence of Breones 151 12. " EUGENIUS. Appointment as Magister Officium 151 13. " SENATE. On the same 152 14. " FAUSTUS. Collection of 'Tertiae' 152 15. " FESTUS. Interests of the absent 153 16. " JULIANUS. Remission of taxes 153 17. " GOTHIC AND ROMAN INHABITANTS OF DERTONA. Fortification of Camp 153 18. " DOMITIANUS AND WILIAS. Statute of Limitations, &c. 154 19. " SATURNINUS AND VERBUSIUS. Rights of the Fiscus 155 20. " ALBINUS AND ALBIENUS. Circus quarrels 155 21. " MAXIMIAN AND ANDREAS. Embellishment of Rome 156 22. " MARCELLUS. His promotion to rank of Advocatus Fisci 156 23. " COELIANUS AND AGAPITUS. Litigation between Senators 157 24. " ALL THE GOTHS. Call to arms 157 25. " SABINIANUS. Repair of the walls of Rome 158 26. " FAUSTUS. Immunity of certain Church property 159 27. " SPECIOSUS. Circus quarrels 159 28. " GOTHS AND ROMANS. Building of walls of Rome 160 29. " THE LUCRISTANI ON RIVER SONTIUS. Postal Service 160 30. " SENATE. Injury to public peace from Circus rivalries 161 31. " THE ROMAN PEOPLE. Same subject 161 32. " AGAPITUS. Same subject 162 33. " " Arrangements for Pantomime 162 34. " FAUSTUS. Exportation of corn 163 35. " " Unreasonable delays in transmission of corn 163 36. " THERIOLUS. Guardianship of sons of Benedictus 164 37. " CRISPIANUS. Justifiable homicide 164 38. " BAION. Hilarius to have possession of his property 165 39. " FESTUS. Nephews of Filagrius to be detained in Rome 165 40. " ASSUIN (or ASSIUS). Inhabitants of Salona to be drilled 166 41. " AGAPITUS. Enquiries into character of younger Faustus 166 42. " ARTEMIDORUS. Appointment as Praefect of the City 167 43. " SENATE. Promotion of Artemidorus 167 44. " THE PEOPLE OF ROME. Same subject 168 45. " BOETIUS. Water-clock and sundial for Burgundian King 168 46. " GUNDIBAD. Same subject 170
Book II
CONTAINING FORTY-ONE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC.
1. TO EMPEROR ANASTASIUS. Consulship of Felix 171 2. " FELIX. Same subject 172 3. " SENATE. Same subject 173 4. " ECDICIUS (or BENEDICTUS). Collection of Siliquaticum 173 5. " FAUSTUS. Soldiers' arrears 173 6. " AGAPITUS. Embassy to Constantinople 174 7. " SURA (or SUNA). Embellishment of City 174 8. " BISHOP SEVERUS. Compensation for damage by troops 175 9. " FAUSTUS. Allowance to retired charioteer 175 10. " SPECIOSUS. Abduction of Agapita 175 11. " PROVINUS (PROBINUS?). Gift unduly obtained from Agapita 176 12. " THE COUNT OF THE SILIQUATARII, AND THE HARBOUR MASTER (OF PORTUS?). Prohibition of export of lard 177 13. " FRUINARITH. Dishonest conduct of Venantius 177 14. " SYMMACHUS. Romulus the parricide 178 15. " VENANTIUS. Appointment as Comes Domesticorum 178 16. " SENATE. Same subject. Panegyric on Liberius, father of Venantius 179 17. " POSSESSORS, DEFENSORS, AND CURIALS OF TRIDENTUM (TRIENT). Immunity from Tertiae enjoyed by lands granted by the King 180 18. " BISHOP GUDILA. Ecclesiastics as Curiales 181 19. " GOTHS AND ROMANS, AND KEEPERS OF HARBOURS AND MOUNTAIN FORTRESSES. Domestic treachery and murder 181 20. " UNILIGIS (or WILIGIS). Order for provision ships 182 21. " JOANNES. Drainage-concession too timidly acted upon 182 22. " FESTUS. Ecdicius to be buried by his sons 183 23. " AMPELIUS, DESPOTIUS, AND THEODULUS. Protection for owners of potteries 183 24. " SENATE. Arrears of taxation due from Senators 183 25. " SENATE. AN EDICT. Evasion of taxes by the rich 184 26. " FAUSTUS. Regulations for corn-traffic 185 27. " JEWS LIVING IN GENOA. Rebuilding of Synagogue 185 28. " STEPHANUS. Honours bestowed on retirement 186 29. " ADILA. Protection to dependents of the Church 186 30. " FAUSTUS. Privileges granted to Church of Milan 187 31. " THE DROMONARII [ROWERS IN EXPRESS-BOATS]. State Galleys on the Po 187 32. " SENATE. Drainage of marshes of Decennonium 188 33. " DECIUS. Same subject 189 34. " ARTEMIDORUS. Embezzlement of City building funds 189 35. " TANCILA. Theft of statue at Como 190 36. EDICT. Same subject 190 37. TO FAUSTUS. Largesse to citizens of Spoleto 190 38. " " Immunity from taxation 191 39. " ALOISIUS. Hot springs of Aponum 191 40. " BOETIUS. Harper for King of the Franks 193 41. " LUDUIN [CLOVIS]. Victories over the Alamanni 194
Book III
CONTAINING FIFTY-THREE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC.
1. TO ALARIC. Dissuades from war with the Franks 196 2. " GUNDIBAD. Dissuades from war 197 3. " THE KINGS OF THE HERULI, WARNI (GUARNI), AND THURINGIANS. Attempt to form a Teutonic coalition 198 4. " LUDUIN (LUDWIG, or CLOVIS). To desist from war on Alaric. 198 5. " IMPORTUNUS. Promotion to the Patriciate 199 6. " SENATE. Same subject 200 7. " JANUARIUS. Reproof for alleged extortion 201 8. " VENANTIUS. Remissness in collection of public revenue 201 9. " POSSESSORES, DEFENSORES, AND CURIALES OF AESTUNAE. Marbles for Ravenna 202 10. " FESTUS. Same subject 202 11. " ARGOLICUS. Appointment to Praefecture of the City 203 12. " SENATE. Same subject 203 13. " SUNHIVAD. Appointment as Governor of Samnium 204 14. " BISHOP AURIGENES. Accusations against servants of a Bishop 204 15. " THEODAHAD. Disposal of contumacious person 205 16. " GEMELLUS. Appointment as Governor of Gaulish Provinces 205 17. " GAULISH PROVINCIALS. Proclamation 206 18. " GEMELLUS. Re-patriation of Magnus 206 19. " DANIEL. Supply of marble sarcophagi 207 20. " GRIMODA AND FERROCINCTUS. Oppression of Castorius by Faustus 207 21. " FAUSTUS. Disgrace and temporary exile 208 22. " ARTEMIDORUS. Invitation to King's presence 209 23. " COLOSSAEUS. Appointment as Governor of Pannonia 209 24. " BARBARIANS AND ROMANS SETTLED IN PANNONIA. Same subject 210 25. " SIMEON. Tax-collecting and iron-mining in Dalmatia 210 26. " OSUN. Simeon's journey to Dalmatia 211 27. " JOANNES. Protection against Praetorian Praefect 211 28. " CASSIODORUS (SENIOR). Invitation to Court 211 29. " ARGOLICUS. Repair of granaries in Rome 212 30. " " Repair of Cloacae " " 212 31. " SENATE. Conservation of aqueducts and temples in Rome 213 32. " GEMELLUS. Remission of taxes to citizens of Arles 214 33. " ARGOLICUS. Promotion of Armentarius and Superbus 214 34. " INHABITANTS OF MASSILIA. Appointment of Governor 215 35. " ROMULUS. Gifts not to be revoked 215 36. " ARIGERN. Complaints against Venantius 216 37. " BISHOP PETER. Alleged injustice 216 38. " WANDIL [VUANDIL]. Gothic troops not to molest citizens 217 39. " FELIX. Largesse to charioteers of Milan 217 40. " PROVINCIALS SETTLED IN GAUL. Exemption from taxation 218 41. " GEMELLUS. Corn for garrisons on the Durance 218 42. " PROVINCIALS IN GAUL. Exemption from military contributions 219 43. " UNIGIS. Fugitive slaves to be restored to owners 219 44. " LANDOWNERS (POSSESSORES) OF ARLES. Repair of walls, &c. 220 45. " ARIGERN. Dispute between Roman Church and Samaritans 220 46. " ADEODATUS. Further charges against Venantius 220 47. " FAUSTUS. Banishment of Jovinus to Vulcanian Islands 222 48. " GOTHS AND ROMANS LIVING NEAR FORT VERRUCA. Fortification 222 49. " POSSESSORES, DEFENSORES, AND CURIALES OF CATANA. Repair of walls 224 50. " PROVINCIALS OF NORICUM. Alamanni and Noricans to exchange cattle 225 51. " FAUSTUS. Stipend of charioteer. Description of Circus 226 52. " CONSULARIS. Roman land surveying 231 53. " APRONIANUS. Water-finders 233
Book IV
CONTAINING FIFTY-ONE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC.
1. TO KING OF THE THURINGIANS. Marriage with Theodoric's niece 235 2. " KING OF THE HERULI. Adoption as son 236 3. " SENARIUS. Appointment as Comes Patrimonii 237 4. " SENATE. Same subject 237 5. " AMABILIS. Supply of provisions to Gaulish Provinces 238 6. " SYMMACHUS. Sons of Valerian to be detained in Rome 238 7. " SENARIUS. Losses by shipwreck to be refunded 239 8. " POSSESSORES AND CURIALES OF FORUM LIVII (FORLI). Transport of timber to Alsuanum 240 9. " OSUIN. 'Tuitio regii nominis' 240 10. " JOANNES. Repression of lawless custom of Pignoratio 240 11. " SENARIUS. Dispute between Possessores and Curiales 241 12. " MARABAD AND GEMELLUS. Complaint of Archotamia 241 13. " SENARIUS. Supplies for Colossaeus and suite 242 14. " GESILA. Evasion of land-tax by Goths 242 15. " BENENATUS. New rowers, and their qualifications 243 16. " SENATE. Arigern entrusted with charge of City of Rome 243 17. " IDA. Church possessions to be restored 244 18. " ANNAS. Enquiry concerning a priestly Ghoul 244 19. " GEMELLUS. Corn, wine, and oil to be exempt from the Siliquaticum 245 20. " GEBERICH. Church land to be restored 245 21. " GEMELLUS. Promptness and integrity required 245 22. " ARGOLICUS. } 23. " ARIGERN. } Accusation of magic against Roman Senators 246 24. " ELPIDIUS. Architectural restoration at Spoleto 247 25. " ARGOLICUS. Petrus to become Senator 247 26. " CITIZENS OF MARSEILLES. Remission of taxes 248 27. " TEZUTZAT. } 28. " DUDA. } Petrus assaulted by his Defensor 248 29. " ARGOLICUS. Official tardiness rebuked 249 30. " ALBINUS. Erection of workshops near Roman Forum 249 31. " AEMILIANUS. Aqueduct to be promptly finished 250 32. " DUDA. Crown rights to be asserted with moderation 250 33. " JEWS OF GENOA. Their privileges confirmed 251 34. " DUDA. Reclamation of buried treasure 252 35. " REPRESENTATIVES (ACTORES) OF ALBINUS. Extravagant minor 252 36. " FAUSTUS. Remission of taxes for Provincials 253 37. " THEODAGUNDA. To do justice to Renatus 253 38. " FAUSTUS. Taxes to be reduced 254 39. " THEODAHAD. His encroachments 254 40. " REPRESENTATIVES (ACTORES) OF PROBINUS. The affair of Agapita 255 41. " JOANNES. Unjust judgment reversed 255 42. " ARGOLICUS. Property to be restored to sons of Volusian 256 43. " SENATE. Punishment of incendiaries of Jewish Synagogue 256 44. " ANTONIUS. To do justice to Stephanus 257 45. " COMITES, DEFENSORES, AND CURIALES OF TICINUM (PAVIA). Heruli to be forwarded on their way to Ravenna 258 46. " MARABAD. Case of Liberius' wife to be reheard 258 47. " GUDISAL. Abuses of the Cursus Publicus 259 48. " EUSEBIUS. His honourable retirement 260 49. " PROVINCIALS AND THE LONG-HAIRED MEN, THE DEFENSORES AND CURIALES RESIDING IN SUAVIA. Appointment of Governor, &c. 260 50. " FAUSTUS. Campanian taxes remitted. Eruption of Vesuvius 261 51. " SYMMACHUS. Restoration of Theatre of Pompey 263
Book V
CONTAINING FORTY-FOUR LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC.
1. TO KING OF THE VANDALS. Thanking for presents 264 2. " THE HAESTI. Their present of amber 265 3. " HONORATUS. } 4. " SENATE. } Promotion to Quaestorship, &c. 266 5. " MANNILA. Abuses of the Cursus Publicus 268 6. " STABULARIUS. } 7. " JOANNES. } Default in payments to Treasury 269 8. " ANASTASIUS. Transport of marbles to Ravenna 270 9. " POSSESSORES OF FELTRIA. New city to be built 270 10. " VERANUS. } 11. " THE GEPIDAE. } Payment on march to Gaul 271 12. " THEODAHAD. His avarice and injustice 272 13. " EUTROPIUS AND ACRETIUS. Commissariat 272 14. " SEVERI(A)NUS. Financial abuses in Suavia 273 15. " POSSESSORES IN SUAVIA. Same subject 274 16. " ABUNDANTIUS. Formation of navy 274 17. " " Same subject 275 18. " UVILIAS [WILLIAS?]. } 19. " GUDINAND. } Same subject 276 20. " AVILF. } 21. " CAPUANUS. } 22. " SENATE. } Appointment as Rector Decuriarum 277 23. " ABUNDANTIUS. Archery drill 279 24. " EPIPHANIUS. Property of intestate claimed for the State 279 25. " BACAUDA. Appointment as Tribunus Voluptatum 280 26. " GOTHS SETTLED IN PICENUM AND SAMNIUM. Summons to the royal presence 280 27. " GUDUIM. The same 280 28. " CARINUS. Invitation to Court 281 29. " NEUDES. Blind Gothic warrior enslaved 281 30. " GUDUI[M]. Servile tasks imposed on free Goths 281 31. " DECORATUS. Arrears of Siliquaticum to be enforced 282 32. " BRANDILA. Assault of his wife on Regina 282 33. " WILITANCH. Adulterous connection between Brandila and Regina 283 34. " ABUNDANTIUS. Frontosus compared to chameleon 284 35. " LUVIRIT AND AMPELIUS. Punishment of fraudulent shipowners 285 36. " STARCEDIUS. Honourable discharge 285 37. " JEWS OF MILAN. Rights of Synagogue not to be invaded 286 38. " ALL CULTIVATORS. Shrubs obstructing aqueduct of Ravenna 286 39. " AMPELIUS AND LIVERIA. Abuses in administration of Spanish government 287 40. " CYPRIAN. } 41. " SENATE. } Promotion to the Comitiva Sacrarum Largitionum 289 42. " MAXIMUS. Rewards to performers in Amphitheatre 291 43. " TRANSMUND [THRASAMUND]. Complains of protection given to Gesalic 292 44. " TRANSMUND [THRASAMUND]. Reconciliation 293
VI. CONTAINING TWENTY-FIVE FORMULAE
1. OF THE CONSULSHIP 294 2. " " PATRICIATE 296 3. " " PRAETORIAN PRAEFECTURE 296 4. " " PRAEFECTURE OF THE CITY 299 5. " " QUAESTORSHIP 300 6. " " MAGISTERIAL DIGNITY, AND ITS EXCELLENCY (MAGISTRATUS OFFICIORUM) 302 7. " " OFFICE OF COMES SACRARUM LARGITIONUM. 303 8. " " " " " PRIVATARUM, AND ITS EXCELLENCY 304 9. " " " " COUNT OF THE PATRIMONY, AND ITS EXCELLENCY 305 10. FOR PROMOTION AS PROCERES PER CODICILLOS VACANTES 306 11. CONFERRING THE RANK OF AN ILLUSTRIS AND TITLE OF COMES DOMESTICORUM, WITHOUT OFFICE 307 12. BESTOWAL OF COUNTSHIP OF FIRST ORDER, WITHOUT OFFICE 307 13. BESTOWING THE HONORARY RANK OF MASTER OF THE BUREAU AND COUNT OF THE FIRST ORDER ON AN OFFICER OF THE COURTS IN ACTIVE SERVICE 308 14. BESTOWING RANK AS A SENATOR 309 15. OF THE VICARIUS OF THE CITY OF ROME 310 16. " " NOTARIES 311 17. " " REFERENDARII 311 18. " " PRAEFECTUS ANNONAE, AND HIS EXCELLENCY 312 19. " " COUNT OF THE CHIEF PHYSICIANS 313 20. " " OFFICE OF A CONSULAR, AND ITS EXCELLENCY 314 21. " " GOVERNOR (RECTOR) OF A PROVINCE 315 22. " " COUNT OF THE CITY OF SYRACUSE 316 23. " " COUNT OF NAPLES 316 24. TO THE GENTLEMEN-FARMERS AND COMMON COUNCILMEN OF THE CITY OF NAPLES 317 25. 'DE COMITIVA PRINCIPIS MILITUM'(?) 317
VII. CONTAINING FORTY-SEVEN FORMULAE
1. OF THE COUNT OF A PROVINCE 319 2. OF A PRAESES 319 3. OF COUNT OF THE GOTHS IN THE SEVERAL PROVINCES 320 4. OF THE DUKE OF RAETIA 322 5. " " PALACE ARCHITECT 323 6. " " COUNT OF THE AQUEDUCTS 324 7. " " PRAEFECT OF THE WATCH OF CITY OF ROME 326 8. " " " " " " RAVENNA 327 9. " " COUNT OF PORTUS 327 10. " " TRIBUNUS VOLUPTATUM 327 11. " " DEFENSOR OF ANY CITY 328 12. " " CURATOR OF A CITY 329 13. " " COUNT OF ROME 329 14. " " " RAVENNA 330 15. ADDRESSED TO THE PRAEFECT OF THE CITY ON APPOINTMENT OF AN ARCHITECT 331 16. OF THE COUNT OF THE ISLANDS OF CURRITANA AND CELSINA 331 17. CONCERNING THE PRESIDENT OF THE LIME-KILNS 332 18. CONCERNING ARMOURERS 332 19. TO THE PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT CONCERNING ARMOURERS 333 20. } 21. } RELATING TO COLLECTION OF BINA AND TERNA 333 22. EXHORTATION ADDRESSED TO TWO SCRINIARII 333 23. OF THE VICARIUS OF PORTUS 334 24. " " PRINCEPS OF DALMATIA 334 25. RECOMMENDING THE PRINCIPES TO THE COMES 335 26. OF THE COUNTSHIP OF SECOND RANK IN DIVERS CITIES 336 27. ADDRESSED TO THE DIGNIFIED CULTIVATORS AND CURIALES 336 28. ANNOUNCING APPOINTMENT OF A COMES TO THE CHIEF OF HIS STAFF 336 29. CONCERNING THE GUARD AT THE GATES OF A CITY 337 30. OF THE TRIBUNATE IN THE PROVINCES 337 31. " " PRINCEPS OF THE CITY OF ROME 338 32. " " MASTER OF THE MINT 338 33. RESPECTING THE AMBASSADORS OF VARIOUS NATIONS 339 34. OF SUMMONS TO THE KING'S COURT (UNSOLICITED) 339 35. OF SUMMONS TO THE COURT (SOLICITED) 339 36. GRANTING TEMPORARY LEAVE OF ABSENCE 339 37. CONFERRING THE RANK OF A SPECTABILIS 340 38. " " CLARISSIMUS 340 39. BESTOWING 'POLICE PROTECTION' 340 40. FOR THE CONFIRMATION OF MARRIAGE AND THE LEGITIMATION OF OFFSPRING 341 41. CONFERRING THE RIGHTS OF FULL AGE 342 42. EDICT TO QUAESTOR, ORDERING PERSON WHO ASKS FOR PROTECTION OF SAJO TO GIVE BAIL 342 43. APPROVING THE APPOINTMENT OF A CLERK IN RECORD-OFFICE 343 44. GRANT OF PUBLIC PROPERTY ON CONDITION OF IMPROVEMENT 343 45. REMISSION OF TAXES WHERE TAXPAYER HAS ONLY ONE HOUSE, TOO HEAVILY ASSESSED 344 46. LEGITIMATING MARRIAGE WITH A FIRST COUSIN 345 47. TO PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, DIRECTING SALE OF THE PROPERTY OF A CURIALIS 345
Book VIII
CONTAINING THIRTY-THREE LETTERS, ALL WRITTEN IN THE NAME OF ATHALARIC THE KING, EXCEPT THE ELEVENTH, WHICH IS WRITTEN IN THE NAME OF TULUM.
1. TO THE EMPEROR JUSTIN. Announcement of Athalaric's accession 347 2. " " SENATE. Same subject 348 3. " " ROMAN PEOPLE. Same subject 349 4. " " ROMANS SETTLED IN ITALY AND THE DALMATIAS. Same subject 350 5. " " GOTHS SETTLED IN ITALY. Same subject 350 6. " LIBERIUS, GOVERNOR OF GAUL. " " 351 7. " THE PROVINCIALS SETTLED IN GAUL. Same subject 351 8. " BISHOP VICTORINUS. Same subject 352 9. " TULUM. Raised to the Patriciate. His praises 352 10. " SENATE. Same subject 354 11. TULUM'S ADDRESS TO SENATE. Elevation to the Patriciate 356 12. TO ARATOR. Promotion to Count of the Domestics 357 13. " AMBROSIUS. Appointment to Quaestorship 358 14. " SENATE. Same subject 359 15. " " Election of Pope Felix III (or IV) 360 16. " OPILIO. Appointment as Count of the Sacred Largesses 361 17. " SENATE. Same subject 363 18. " FELIX. Promotion to Quaestorship 365 19. " SENATE. Same subject 366 20. " ALBIENUS. Appointment as Praetorian Praefect 367 21. " CYPRIAN. } 22. " SENATE. } Elevation to the Patriciate 368 23. " BERGANTINUS. Gifts to Theodahad 370 24. " CLERGY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. Ecclesiastical immunities 371 25. " JOANNES. Confirmation of Tulum's gift of property 373 26. " INHABITANTS OF REATE AND NURSIA. To obey their Prior 374 27. " DUMERIT AND FLORENTINUS. To suppress robbery at Faventia 375 28. " CUNIGAST. Enforced slavery of Possessores (or Coloni?) 376 29. " THE DIGNIFIED CULTIVATORS AND CURIALS OF PARMA. Necessity for sanitary measures 377 30. " GENESIUS. Same subject 377 31. " SEVERUS. Dissuasions from a country life, and praises of Bruttii 378 32. " " Fountain of Arethusa 380 33. " " Feast of St. Cyprian 381
Book IX
CONTAINING TWENTY-FIVE LETTERS, WRITTEN IN THE NAME OF ATHALARIC THE KING.
1. TO HILDERIC. Murder of Amalafrida 384 2. EDICT. Oppression of the Curiales 385 3. TO BERGANTINUS. Gold-mining in Italy 387 4. " ABUNDANTIUS. Curiales to become Possessores 388 5. " CERTAIN BISHOPS AND FUNCTIONARIES. Forestalling and regrating prohibited 389 6. " A CERTAIN PRIMISCRINIUS. Leave to visit Baiae 389 7. " REPARATUS. Appointment to Praefecture of City 390 8. " OSUIN (or OSUM). Promotion to Governorship of Dalmatia and Savia 391 9. " GOTHS AND ROMANS IN DALMATIA AND SAVIA. Same subject 392 10. " PROVINCIALS OF SYRACUSE. Remission of Augmentum 393 11. " GILDIAS. {Oppression by King's} 12. " VICTOR AND WITIGISCLUS (or WIGISICLA). { officers rebuked } 394 13. " WILLIAS. Increase of emoluments of Domestici 394 14. " GILDIAS. Charge of oppression 395 15. " POPE JOHN II. Against Simony at Papal elections 398 16. " SALVANTIUS. Same subject 400 17. " " Release of two Roman citizens 400 18. EDICT. Offences against Civilitas 401 19. TO SENATE. Promulgation of Edict 405 20. " JUDGES OF PROVINCES. Same subject 405 21. " SENATE. Increase of Grammarians' salaries 406 22. " PAULINUS. Appointment as Consul 407 23. " SENATE. Same subject 408 24. " SENATOR [CASSIODORUS HIMSELF]. Appointment as Praetorian Praefect, &c. 408 25. " SENATE. Eulogy of Cassiodorus on his appointment. His Gothic History. His official career. His military services. His religious character 412-413
Book X
CONTAINING THIRTY-FIVE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS:
FOUR IN THE NAME OF QUEEN AMALASUENTHA; TWENTY-TWO IN THAT OF KING THEODAHAD; FOUR IN THAT OF HIS WIFE GUDELINA; FIVE IN THAT OF KING WITIGIS.
1. QUEEN AMALASUENTHA TO EMPEROR JUSTINIAN. Association of Theodahad in the Sovereignty 415 2. KING THEODAHAD TO EMPEROR JUSTINIAN. Same subject 416 3. AMALASUENTHA TO SENATE. Same. Praises of Theodahad 416 4. THEODAHAD TO SENATE. Same. Praises of Amalasuentha 418 5. " " HIS MAN THEODOSIUS. Followers of new King to live justly 421 6. " " PATRICIUS. Appointment to Quaestorship 422 7. " " SENATE. Same subject 422 8. AMALASUENTHA TO JUSTINIAN. Acknowledging present of marbles 423 9. THEODAHAD TO JUSTINIAN. Same subject 423 10. AMALASUENTHA TO THEODORA. Salutation 424 11. THEODAHAD TO MAXIMUS. Appointment to office of Primicerius 424 12. " " SENATE. Same subject 425 13. " " " Summons to Ravenna. Suspicions of Senators 426 14. " " THE ROMAN PEOPLE. Dissensions between citizens of Rome and Gothic troops 427 15. " " EMPEROR JUSTINIAN. Letter of introduction for Ecclesiastic 428 16. " " SENATE. Assurances of good-will 428 17. " " THE ROMAN PEOPLE. Same subject 429 18. " " SENATE. Gothic garrison for Rome 430 19. " " JUSTINIAN. Embassy of Peter 431 20. QUEEN GUDELINA TO THEODORA, AUGUSTA. Embassy of Rusticus 432 21. " " " " " Soliciting friendship 433 22. THEODAHAD TO JUSTINIAN. Entreaties for peace 434 23. GUDELINA TO THEODORA. Same subject 435 24. " " JUSTINIAN. Same subject 436 25. THEODAHAD TO JUSTINIAN. Same subject 436 26. " " " Monastery too heavily taxed 437 27. " " SENATOR. Corn distributions in Liguria and Venetia 438 28. " " " Grant of monopolies 438 29. " " WINUSIAD. Old soldier gets leave to visit baths of Bormio 440 30. " " HONORIUS. Brazen elephants in the Via Sacra. Natural history of elephant 442 31. KING WITIGIS TO ALL THE GOTHS. On his elevation 444 32. " " " JUSTINIAN. Overtures for peace 445 33. " " " THE MASTER OF THE OFFICES (at Constantinople). Sending of embassy 447 34. " " " HIS BISHOPS. Same subject 448 35. " " " THE PRAEFECT OF THESSALONICA. Same subject 448
Book XI
CONTAINING THIRTY-NINE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN HIS OWN NAME AS PRAEFECTUS PRAETORIO, AND ONE ON BEHALF OF THE ROMAN SENATE.
PREFACE 449
1. TO SENATE. On his promotion to the Praefecture. Praises of Amalasuentha. Comparison to Placidia. Relations with the East. Expedition against Franks. League with Burgundians. Virtues of Amal Kings 452-457 2. " POPE JOHN. Salutations 458 3. " DIVERS BISHOPS. The same 459 4. " AMBROSIUS (HIS DEPUTY). Functions of Praefect's Deputy 460 5. " THE SAME. Grain distributions for Rome 461 6. " JOANNES. Functions of the Cancellarius 462 7. " JUDGES OF THE PROVINCES. Duties of tax-collectors 464 8. EDICT PUBLISHED THROUGH THE PROVINCES. Announcement of Cassiodorus' principles of administration 465 9. TO JUDGES OF THE PROVINCES. Exhortation to govern in conformity with Edict 467 10. " BEATUS. Davus invalided to Mons Lactarius. The milk-cure for consumption 468-469 11. EDICT. Concerning prices to be maintained at Ravenna 469 12. " Concerning prices along the Flaminian Way 470 13. THE SENATE TO EMPEROR JUSTINIAN. Supplications of the Senate 471 14. TO GAUDIOSUS. Praises of Como. Relief of its inhabitants 474 15. " THE LIGURIANS. Relief of their necessities 475 16. " THE SAME. Oppressions practised on them to be remedied 476 17. " THE PRINCEPS(?). Promotions in Official Staff of Praetorian Praefect 477 18-35. VARIOUSLY ADDRESSED. [Documents, for the most part very short ones, relating to these promotions.] 477-480 36. TO ANAT(H)OLIUS. Retirement of a Cornicularius on superannuation allowance justified on astronomical grounds 480 37. " LUCINUS. Payment of retiring Primiscrinius 482 38. " JOANNES. Praises of paper 483 39. " VITALIAN. Payment of commuted cattle-tax 484 40. INDULGENCE [TO PRISONERS ON SOME GREAT FESTIVAL OF THE CHURCH, PROBABLY EASTER]. General Amnesty 485
Book XII
CONTAINING TWENTY-EIGHT LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN HIS OWN NAME AS PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT.
1. TO THE VARIOUS CANCELLARII OF THE PROVINCES. General instructions 487 2. " ALL JUDGES OF THE PROVINCES. General instructions to Provincial Governors 488 3. " SAJONES ASSIGNED TO THE CANCELLARII. General instructions 489 4. " THE CANONICARIUS OF THE VENETIAE. Praise of Acinaticium 490 5. " VALERIAN. Measures for relief of Lucania and Bruttii 492 6. " ALL SUBORDINATE GOVERNORS OF THE PRAEFECTURE. General instructions 494 7. " THE TAX-COLLECTOR OF THE VENETIAN PROVINCE. Remission of taxes on account of invasion by Suevi 495 8. " THE CONSULARIS OF THE PROVINCE OF LIGURIA. Permission to pay taxes direct to Royal Treasury 495 9. " PASCHASIUS. Claim of an African to succeed to estate of intestate countryman 496 10. " DIVERS CANCELLARII. Taxes to be punctually enforced 497 11. " PETER, DISTRIBUTOR OF RELISHES. Their due distribution 498 12. " ANASTASIUS. Praise of the cheese and wine of Bruttii 499 13. EDICT. Frauds committed by revenue-officers on Churches 500 14. TO ANASTASIUS. Plea for gentle treatment of citizens of Rhegium 501 15. " MAXIMUS. Praises of author's birthplace, Scyllacium 503 16. " A REVENUE OFFICER. Payment of Trina Illatio 506 17. " JOHN, SILIQUATARIUS OF RAVENNA. Defence of city 507 18. " CONSTANTIAN. Repair of Flaminian Way 507 19. " MAXIMUS. Bridge of boats across the Tiber 509 20. " THOMAS AND PETER. Sacred vessels mortgaged by Pope Agapetus to be restored to Papal See 510 21. " DEUSDEDIT. Duties of a Scribe 511 22. " PROVINCIALS OF ISTRIA. Requisition from Province of Istria 513 23. " LAURENTIUS. Same subject 515 24. " TRIBUNES OF THE MARITIME POPULATION. First historical notice of Venice 515 25. " AMBROSIUS, HIS DEPUTY. Famine in Italy 518 26. " PAULUS. Remission of taxes in consequence of famine 520 27. " DATIUS. Relief of famine-stricken citizens of Ticinum, &c. 521 28. EDICT [ADDRESSED TO LIGURIANS]. Relief of inhabitants 523
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
P. 6, l. 30, for 'Scylletium' read 'Scylletion.'
P. 24, n. 1, for 'Uterwerfung' read 'Unterwerfung.'
In the 'Note on the Topography of Squillace' (pp. 68-72), and the map illustrating it, for 'Scylacium' read 'Scyllacium.' (The line of Virgil, however, quoted on p. 6, shows that the name was sometimes spelt with only one 'l.')
Pp. 94 and 96, head line, dele 'the.'
P. 128 (Chronological Table, under heading 'Popes') for 'John III.' read 'John II.'
P. 146 (last line of text). S. Gaudenzi remarks that the addresses of the laws in the Code of Justinian forbid us to suppose that Heliodorus was Praetorian Praefect for eighteen years. He thinks that most likely the meaning of the words 'in illa republica nobis videntibus praefecturam bis novenis annis gessit eximie' is that twice in the space of nine years Heliodorus filled the office of Praefect.
P. 159, Letter 27 of Book I. The date of this letter is probably 509, as Importunus, who is therein mentioned as Consul, was Consul in that year.
P. 160, Letter 29 of Book I. S. Gaudenzi points out that a letter has probably dropped out here, as the title does not fit the contents of the letter, which seems to have been addressed to a Sajo.
In the titles of I. 14, 26, 34, 35, and II. 5 and 9, for 'Praepositus' read 'Praetorian Praefect.' The contraction used by the early amanuenses for Praefecto Praetorio has been misunderstood by their successors, and consequently many MSS. read 'Praeposito,' and this reading has been followed by Nivellius. There can be no doubt, however, that Garet is right in restoring 'Praefecto Praetorio.'
On the other hand, I have been misled by Garet's edition into quoting the following letters as addressed Viro Senatori; I. 38; II. 23, 28, 29, 35; III. 8, 13, 15, 16, 27, 32, 41; IV. 10, 12, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 28; V. 21, 24. Here, too, the only MSS. that I have examined read 'Viro Senatori;' but Nivellius preserves what is no doubt the earlier reading, 'V.S.,' which assuredly stands for 'Viro Spectabili.' Practically there is no great difference between the two readings, and the remarks made by me on II. 29, 35, &c., as to Senators with Gothic names may still stand; for as every Senator was (at least) a Clarissimus, it is not likely that any person who reached the higher dignity of a Spectabilis was not also a Senator. (See pp. 90 and 91.)
P. 181, Letter 19 of Book II. Here again, on account of the want of correspondence between the title and contents of the letter, S. Gaudenzi suggests that a letter has dropped out.
P. 182, title of Letter 20, for 'Unigilis' read 'Uniligis.'
P. 205, l. 6 from bottom, for 'Praefectum' read 'Praefectorum.'
P. 206, l. 1, for 'Provinces' read 'Provincials.'
P. 224 (marginal note), for 'amphitheatre' read 'walls.' Last line (text), for 'its' read 'their.'
P. 244, title of Letter 17, for 'Idae' some MSS. read 'Ibbae,' which is probably the right reading, Ibbas having commanded the Ostrogothic army in Gaul in 510.
P. 247, dele the last two lines. (The Peter who was Consul in 516 was an official of the Eastern Empire, the same who came on an embassy to Theodahad in 535.)
P. 253. l. 9, for '408' read '508.'
P. 255, ll. 9, 14, and in margin, for 'Agapeta' read 'Agapita.'
P. 256, ll. 16, 26, and in margin, for 'Velusian' read 'Volusian.'
P. 256, title of Letter 43. S. Gaudenzi thinks this letter was really addressed to Argolicus, Praefectus Urbis.
P. 269, l. 20, dele 'possibly Stabularius.'
P. 282, Letter 31 of Book V. (to Decoratus). As Decoratus is described in V. 3 and 4 as already dead, it is clear that the letters are not arranged in chronological order.
P. 282, l. 27, for 'upon' read 'before.'
P. 288, l. 25, for 'extortions' read 'extra horses.'
P. 291, l. 6, for 'Anomymus' read 'Anonymus.'
P. 308, l. 7. This is an important passage, as illustrating the nature of the office which Cassiodorus held as Consiliarius to his father.
P. 333, second marginal note, for 'aguntur' read 'agantur' (twice).
P. 398, title of Letter 15, for '532' read '533-535.'
P. 400, title of Letter 17, for 'between 532 and 534' read 'between 533 and 535.'
P. 450, l. 8. Probably, as suggested by S. Gaudenzi, Felix was Consiliarius to Cassiodorus.
I. LIFE OF CASSIODORUS
The interest of the life of Cassiodorus is derived from his position rather than from his character. He was a statesman of considerable sagacity and of unblemished honour, a well-read scholar, and a devout Christian; but he was apt to crouch before the possessors of power however unworthy, and in the whole of his long and eventful life we never find him playing a part which can be called heroic.
[Sidenote: Position of Cassiodorus on the confines of the Ancient and the Modern.]
His position, however, which was in more senses than one that of a borderer between two worlds, gives to the study of his writings an exceptional value. Born a few years after the overthrow of the Western Empire, a Roman noble by his ancestry, a rhetorician-philosopher by his training, he became what we should call the Prime Minister of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric; he toiled with his master at the construction of the new state, which was to unite the vigour of Germany and the culture of Rome; for a generation he saw this edifice stand, and when it fell beneath the blows of Belisarius he retired, perhaps well-nigh broken-hearted, from the political arena. The writings of such a man could hardly fail, at any rate they do not fail, to give us many interesting glimpses into the political life both of the Romans and the Barbarians. It is true that they throw more light backwards than forwards, that they teach us far more about the constitution of the Roman Empire than they do about the Teutonic customs from whence in due time Feudalism was to be born. Still, they do often illustrate these Teutonic usages; and when we remember that the writer to whom after Tacitus we are most deeply indebted for our knowledge of Teutonic antiquity, Jordanes, professedly compiled his ill-written pamphlet from the Twelve Books of the Gothic History of Cassiodorus, we see that indirectly his contribution to the history of the German factor in European civilisation is a most important one.
Thus then, as has been already said, Cassiodorus stood on the confines of two worlds, the Ancient and the Modern; indeed it is a noteworthy fact that the very word modernus occurs for the first time with any frequency in his writings. Or, if the ever-shifting boundary between Ancient and Modern be drawn elsewhere than in the fifth and sixth centuries, at any rate it is safe to say, that he stood on the boundary of two worlds, the Roman and the Teutonic.
[Sidenote: Also on the confines of Politics and Religion.]
But the statesman who, after spending thirty years at the Court of Theodoric and his daughter, spent thirty-three years more in the monastery which he had himself erected at Squillace, was a borderer in another sense than that already mentioned--a borderer between the two worlds of Politics and Religion; and in this capacity also, as the contemporary, perhaps the friend, certainly the imitator, of St. Benedict, and in some respects the improver upon his method, Cassiodorus largely helped to mould the destinies of mediaeval and therefore of modern Europe.
I shall now proceed to indicate the chief points in the life and career of Cassiodorus. Where, as is generally the case, our information comes from his own correspondence, I shall, to avoid repetition, not do much more than refer the reader to the passage in the following collection, where he will find the information given as nearly as may be in the words of the great Minister himself.
[Sidenote: His ancestors.]
The ancestors of Cassiodorus for three generations, and their public employments, are enumerated for us in the letters (Var. i. 3-4) which in the name of Theodoric he wrote on his father's elevation to the Patriciate. From these letters we learn that--
[Sidenote: Great grandfather.]
(1) Cassiodorus, the writer's great grandfather, who held the rank of an Illustris, defended the shores of Sicily and Bruttii from the incursions of the Vandals. This was probably between 430 and 440, and, as we may suppose, towards the end of the life of this statesman, to whom we may conjecturally assign a date from 390 to 460.
[Sidenote: Grandfather.]
(2) His son and namesake, the grandfather of our Cassiodorus, was a Tribune (a military rank nearly corresponding to our 'Colonel') and Notarius under Valentinian III. He enjoyed the friendship of the great Aetius, and was sent with Carpilio the son of that statesman on an embassy to Attila, probably between the years 440 and 450. In this embassy, according to his grandson, he exerted an extraordinary influence over the mind of the Hunnish King. Soon after this he retired to his native Province of Bruttii, where he passed the remainder of his days. We may probably fix the limits of his life from about 420 to 490.
[Sidenote: Father.]
(3) His son, the third Cassiodorus, our author's father, served under Odovacar (therefore between 476 and 492), as Comes Privatarum Rerum and Comes Sacrarum Largitionum. These two offices, one of which nominally involved the care of the domains of the Sovereign and the other the regulation of his private charities, were in fact the two great financial offices of the Empire and of the barbarian royalties which modelled their system upon it. Upon the fall of the throne of Odovacar, Cassiodorus transferred his services to Theodoric, at the beginning of whose reign he acted as Governor (Consularis[1]) of Sicily. In this capacity he showed much tact and skill, and thereby succeeded in reconciling the somewhat suspicious and intractable Sicilians to the rule of their Ostrogothic master. He next administered (as Corrector[2]) his own native Province of 'Bruttii et Lucania[3].' Either in the year 500 or soon after, he received from Theodoric the highest mark of his confidence that the Sovereign could bestow, being raised to the great place of Praetorian Praefect, which still conferred a semi-regal splendour upon its holder, and which possibly under a Barbarian King may have involved yet more participation in the actual work of reigning than it had done under a Roman Emperor.
[Footnote 1: We get these titles from the Notitia Occidentis I.]
[Footnote 2: [See previous footnote.]]
[Footnote 3: On the authority of a letter of Pope Gelasius, 'Philippo et Cassiodoro,' Usener fixes this governorship of Bruttii between the years 493 and 496 (p. 76).]
The Praefecture of this Cassiodorus probably lasted three or four years, and at its close he received the high honour of the Patriciate. We are not able to name the exact date of his retirement from office; but the important point for us is, that while he still held this splendid position his son was first introduced to public life. To that son's history we may now proceed, for we have no further information of importance as to the father's old age or death beyond the intimation (contained in Var. iii. 28) that Theodoric invited him, apparently in vain, to leave his beloved Bruttii and return to the Court of Ravenna.
MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS SENATOR was born at Scyllacium (Squillace) about the year 480. His name, his birthplace, and his year of birth will each require a short notice.
[Sidenote: Name.]
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus, or Cassiodorius.]
(1) Name. Magnus (not Marcus, as it has been sometimes incorrectly printed) is the author's praenomen. Aurelius, the gentile name, connects him with a large gens, of which Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus was one of the most distinguished ornaments. As to the form of the cognomen there is a good deal of diversity of opinion, the majority of German scholars preferring Cassiodor_i_us to Cassiodorus. The argument in favour of the former spelling is derived from the fact that some of the MSS. of his works (not apparently the majority) write the name with the termination rius, and that while it is easy to understand how from the genitive form ri a nominative rus might be wrongly inferred instead of the real nominative rius, it is not easy to see why the opposite mistake should be made, and rius substituted for the genuine rus.
The question will probably be decided one way or the other by the critical edition of the 'Variae' which is to be published among the 'Monumenta Germaniae Historica;' but in the meantime it may be remarked that the correct Greek form of the name as shown by inscriptions appears to be Cassiodo_rus_, and that in a poem of Alcuin's[4] occurs the line
'Cassiodorus item Chrysostomus atque Johannes,'
showing that the termination rus was generally accepted as early as the eighth century. It is therefore to be hoped that this is the form which may finally prevail.
[Footnote 4: De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, p. 843 of Migne's Second Volume of Alcuin's Works. I owe this quotation to Adolph Franz.]
[Sidenote: Senator.]
Senator, it is clear, was part of the original name of Cassiodorus, and not a title acquired by sitting in the Roman Senate. It seems a curious custom to give a title of this kind to an infant as part of his name, but the well-known instance of Patricius (St. Patrick) shows that this was sometimes done, and there are other instances (collected by Thorbecke, p. 34) of this very title Senator being used as a proper name.
It is clear from Jordanes (who calls the Gothic History of Cassiodorus 'duodecem Senatoris volumina de origine actibusque Getarum[5]'), from Pope Vigilius (who speaks of 'religiosum virum filium nostrum Senatorem[6]'), from the titles of the letters written by Cassiodorus[7], and from his punning allusions to his own name and the love to the Senate which it had prophetically expressed, that Senator was a real name and not a title of honour.
[Footnote 5: Preface to Getica (Mommsen's Edition, p. 53).]
[Footnote 6: Epist. XIV. ad Rusticum et Sebastianum (Migne, p. 49).]
[Footnote 7: Nearly all the letters in the XIth and XIIth Books of the Variae are headed 'Senator Praefectus Praetorio.']
[Sidenote: Birthplace, Scyllacium.]
(2) Scyllacium, the modern Squillace, was, according to Cassiodorus, the first, either in age or in importance, of the cities of Bruttii, a Province which corresponds pretty closely with the modern Calabria. It is situated at the head of the gulf to which it gives its name, on the eastern side of Italy, and at the point where the peninsula is pinched in by the Tyrrhene and Ionian Seas to a width of only fifteen miles, the narrowest dimensions to which it is anywhere reduced. The Apennine chain comes here within a distance of about five miles of the sea, and upon one of its lower dependencies Scyllacium was placed. The slight promontory in front of the town earned for it from the author of the Aeneid the ominous name of 'Navifragum Scylaceum[8].' In the description which Cassiodorus himself gives of his birthplace (Var. xii. 15) we hear nothing of the danger to mariners which had attracted the attention of Virgil, possibly a somewhat timid sailor. The name, however, given to the place by the Greek colonists who founded it, Scylletium, is thought by some to contain an allusion to dangers of the coast similar to those which were typified by the barking dogs of the not far distant Scylla.
[Footnote 8:
'Adtollit se diva Lacinia contra, Caulonisque arces, et navifragum Scylaceum.'
(iii. 552-3.)]
[Sidenote: The Greek city.]
According to Cassiodorus, this Greek city was founded by Ulysses after the destruction of Troy. Strabo[9] attributes the foundation of it to the almost equally widespread energy of Menestheus. The form of the name makes it probable that the colonists were in any case of Ionian descent; but in historic times we find Scylletion subject to the domineering Achaian city of Crotona, from whose grasp it was wrested (B.C. 389) by the elder Dionysius. It no doubt shared in the general decay of the towns of this part of Magna Graecia consequent on the wars of Dionysius and Agathocles, and may very probably, like Crotona, have been taken and laid waste by the Bruttian banditti in the Second Punic War. During the latter part of this war Hannibal seems to have occupied a position near to, but not in, the already ruined city, and its port was known long after as Castra Hannibalis[10].
[Footnote 9: p. 375: ed. Oxon. 1807.]
[Footnote 10: Pliny (Hist. Nat. iii. 10) says: 'Dein sinus Scylacius et Scyllacium, Scylletium Atheniensibus, cum conderent, dictum: quem locum occurrens Terinaeus sinus peninsulam efficit: et in eâ portus qui vocatur Castra Annibalis, nusquam angustiore Italia XX millia passuum latitudo est.']
[Sidenote: The Roman colony.]
[11]'A century before the end of the Republic, a city much more considerable than that which had existed in the past was again established near the point where the Greek Scylletion had existed. Among the colonies of Roman citizens founded B.C. 123 on the rogation of Caius Gracchus, was one sent to this part of Bruttii, under the name of Colonia Minervia Scolacium, a name parallel to those of Colonia Neptunia Tarentum and Colonia Junonia Karthago, decided on at the same time. Scolacium is the form that we meet with in Velleius Paterculus, and that is found in an extant Latin inscription of the time of Antoninus Pius. This is the old Latin form of the name of the town. Scylacium, which first appears as used by the writers of the first century of our era, is a purely literary form springing from the desire to get nearer to the Greek type Scylletion.
[Footnote 11: I take the two following paragraphs from Lenormant's La Grande Grèce, pp. 342-3.]
'Scolacium, or Scylacium, a town purely Roman by reason of the origin of its first colonists, was from its earliest days an important city, and remained such till the end of the Empire. Pomponius Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy speak of it as one of the principal cities of Bruttii. It had for its port Castra Hannibalis. Under Nero its population was strengthened by a new settlement of veterans as colonists. The city then took the names of Colonia Minervia Nervia Augusta Scolacium. We read these names in an inscription discovered in 1762 at 1,800 metres from the modern Squillace, between that city and the sea--an inscription which mentions the construction of an aqueduct bringing water to Scolacium, executed 143 A.D. at the cost of the Emperor Antoninus.'
[Sidenote: Appearance of the city at the time of Cassiodorus.]
For the appearance of this Roman colony in the seventh century of its existence the reader is referred to the letter of Cassiodorus before quoted (Var. xii. 15). The picture of the city, 'hanging like a cluster of grapes upon the hills, basking in the brightness of the sun all day long, yet cooled by the breezes from the sea, and looking at her leisure on the labours of the husbandman in the corn-fields, the vineyards, and the olive-groves around her,' is an attractive one, and shows that kind of appreciation of the gentler beauties of Nature which befits a countryman of Virgil.
This picture, however, is not distinctive enough to enable us from it alone to fix the exact site of the Roman city. Lenormant (pp. 360-370), while carefully distinguishing between the sites of the Greek Scylletion and the Latin Scolacium, and assigning the former with much apparent probability to the neighbourhood of the promontory and the Grotte di Stalletti, has been probably too hasty in his assertion that the modern city of Squillace incontestably covers the ground of the Latin Scolacium. Mr. Arthur J. Evans, after making a much more careful survey of the place and its neighbourhood than the French archaeologist had leisure for, has come to the conclusion that in this identification M. Lenormant is entirely wrong, and that the Roman city was not at Squillace, where there are no remains of earlier than mediaeval times, but at Roccella del Vescovo, five or six miles from Squillace in a north-easterly direction, where there are such remains as can only have belonged to a Roman provincial city of the first rank. For a further discussion of the question the reader is referred to the Note (and accompanying Map) at the end of this chapter.
We pass on from considering the place of Cassiodorus' birth to investigate the date of that event.
[Sidenote: Date of birth.]
(3) The only positive statement that we possess as to the birth-year of Cassiodorus comes from a very late and somewhat unsatisfactory source. John Trittheim (or Trithemius), Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Spanheim, who died in 1516, was one of the ecclesiastical scholars of the Renaissance period, and composed, besides a multitude of other books, a treatise 'De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis,' in which is found this notice of Cassiodorus[12]:--
'Claruit temporibus Justini senioris usque ad imperii Justini junioris paene finem, annos habens aetatis plus quam 95, Anno Domini 575.'
[Footnote 12: The reference is given by Köpke (Die Anfänge des Königthums, p. 88) as 'De scr. ecc. 212 Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, ed. Fabricius, p. 58;' by Thorbecke (p. 8) as 'Catalogus seu liber scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, Coloniae 1546, p. 94.' Franz (p. 4) quotes from the same edition as Köpke, 'De script. eccl. c. 212 in Fabricii biblioth. eccl., Hamburgi 1728, iii. p. 58.']
This notice is certainly not one to which we should attach much importance if it contradicted earlier and trustworthy authorities, or if there were any internal evidence against it. But if this cannot be asserted, it is not desirable entirely to discard the assertion of a scholar who, in the age of the Renaissance and before the havoc wrought among the monasteries of Germany by the Thirty Years' War, may easily have had access to some sources which are now no longer available.
When we examine the information which is thus given us, we find it certainly somewhat vague. 'Cassiodorus was illustrious' (no doubt as a writer, since it is 'ecclesiastici scriptores' of whom Trittheim is speaking) 'in the time of Justin the Elder [518-527] down nearly to the end of the reign of Justin the Younger [565-578], attaining to more than 95 years of age in the year of our Lord 575.' But on reflection we see that the meaning must be that Cassiodorus died in 575 (which agrees well with the words 'paene finem imperii Justini junioris'), and that when he died he was some way on in his 96th year, or as we say colloquially 'ninety-five off.' The marvel of his attaining such an age is no doubt the reason for inserting the 'plus quam,' to show that he did not die immediately after his 95th birthday. If this notice be trustworthy, therefore, we may place the birth of Cassiodorus in 479 or 480.
Now upon examining all the facts in our possession as to his career as a statesman and an author, and especially our latest acquired information[13], we find that they do in a remarkable manner agree with Trittheim's date, while we have no positive statement by any author early or late which really conflicts with it.
[Footnote 13: The Anecdoton Holderi.]
The only shadow of an argument that has been advanced for a different and earlier date is so thin that it is difficult to state without confuting it. In some editions of the works of Cassiodorus there appears a very short anonymous tract on the method of determining Easter, called 'Computus Paschalis,' and composed in 562. In the 'Orthographia,' which was undoubtedly written by Cassiodorus at the age of 93, and which contains a list of his previously published works, no mention is made of this 'Computus.' It must therefore, say the supporters of the theory, have been written after he was 93. He must have been at least 94 in 562, and the year of his birth must be put back at least to 468. In this argument there are two absolutely worthless links. There is no evidence to show that the 'Computus Paschalis' came from the pen of Cassiodorus at all, but much reason to think that Pithoeus, the editor who first published it under his name, was mistaken in doing so. And if it were his, a little memorandum like this--only two pages long, and with no literary pretension whatever--we may almost say with certainty would not be included by the veteran author in the enumeration of his theological works prefixed to his 'Orthographia.'
The reason why a theory founded on such an absurdly weak basis has held its ground at all, has probably been that it buttressed up another obvious fallacy. A whole school of biographers of Cassiodorus and commentators on his works has persisted, in spite of the plainest evidence of his letters, in identifying him with his father, who bore office under Odovacar (476-493). To do this it was necessary to get rid of the date 480 for the birth of Cassiodorus Senator, and to throw back that event as far as possible. And yet, not even by pushing it back to 468, do they make it reasonably probable that a person, who was only a child of eight years old at Odovacar's accession, could in the course of his short reign (the last four years of which were filled by his struggle with Theodoric) have held the various high offices which were really held during that reign by the father of Senator.
We assume therefore with some confidence the year 480 as the approximate date of the birth of our author; and while we observe that this date fits well with those which the course of history induces us to assign to his ancestors in the three preceding generations[14], we also note with interest that it was, as nearly as we can ascertain, the year of the birth of two of the most distinguished contemporaries of Cassiodorus--Boethius and Benedict.
[Footnote 14: Cassiodorus the First, born about 390; the Second, about 420; the Third, about 450.]
[Sidenote: Education of Cassiodorus.]
Of the training and education of the young Senator we can only speak from their evident results as displayed in the 'Variae,' to which the reader is accordingly referred. It may be remarked, however, that though he evidently received the usual instruction in philosophy and rhetoric which was given to a young Roman noble aspiring to employment in the Civil Service, there are some indications that the bent of his own genius was towards Natural History, strange and often laughable as are the facts or fictions which this taste of his has caused him to accumulate.
[Sidenote: Consiliarius to his father.]
In the year 500[15], when Senator had just attained the age of twenty, his father, as we have already seen, received from Theodoric the high office of Praetorian Praefect. As a General might make an Aide-de-camp of his son, so the Praefect conferred upon the young Senator the post of Consiliarius, or Assessor in his Court[16]. The Consiliarius[17] had been in the time of the Republic an experienced jurist who sat beside the Praetor or the Consul (who might be a man quite unversed in the law) and advised him as to his judgments. From the time of Severus onwards he became a paid functionary of the Court, receiving a salary which varied from 12 to 72 solidi (£7 to £43). At the time which we are now describing it was customary for the Judge to choose his Consiliarius from among the ranks of young jurists who had just completed their studies. The great legal school of Berytus especially furnished a large number of Consiliarii to the Roman Governors. In order to prevent an officer in this position from obtaining an undue influence over the mind of his principal, the latter was forbidden by law to keep a Consiliarius, who was a native of the Province in which he was administering justice, more than four months in his employ[18]. This provision, of course, would not apply when the young Assessor, as in the case of Cassiodorus, came with his father from a distant Province: and in such a case, if the Magistrate died during his year of office, by a special enactment the fairly-earned pay of the Assessor was protected from unjust demands on the part of the Exchequer[19]. The functions thus exercised by Senator in his father's court at Rome, and the title which he bore, were somewhat similar to those which Procopius held in the camp of Belisarius, but doubtless required a more thorough legal training. In our own system, if we could imagine the Judge's Marshal invested with the responsibilities of a Registrar of the Court, we should perhaps get a pretty fair idea of the position and duties of a Roman Consiliarius[20].
[Footnote 15: Or possibly 501.]
[Footnote 16: This fact, and also the cause of Senator's promotion to the Quaestorship, we learn from the Anecdoton Holderi described in a following chapter.]
[Footnote 17: The terms Adsessor, Consiliarius, [Greek: Paredros], [Greek: Symboulos], seem all to indicate the same office.]
[Footnote 18: Cod. Theod. i. 12. 1.]
[Footnote 19: This seems to be the meaning of Cod. Theod. i. 12. 2. The gains of the 'filii familias Assessores' were to be protected as if they were 'castrense peculium.']
[Footnote 20: Some points in this description are taken from Bethmann Hollweg, Gerichtsverfassung der sinkenden Römischen Reichs, pp. 153-158.]
[Sidenote: Panegyric on Theodoric.]
[Sidenote: Appointed Quaestor.]
It was while Cassiodorus was holding this agreeable but not important position, that the opportunity came to him, by his dexterous use of which he sprang at one bound into the foremost ranks of the official hierarchy. On some public occasion it fell to his lot to deliver an oration in praise of Theodoric[21], and he did this with such admirable eloquence--admirable according to the depraved taste of the time--that Theodoric at once bestowed upon the orator, still in the first dawn of manhood[22], the 'Illustrious' office of Quaestor, giving him thereby what we should call Cabinet-rank, and placing him among the ten or eleven ministers of the highest class[23], by whom, under the King, the fortunes of the Gothic-Roman State were absolutely controlled.
[Footnote 21: 'Cassiodorus Senator ... juvenis adeo, dum patris Cassiodori patricii et praefecti praetorii consiliarius fieret et laudes Theodorichi regis Gothorum facundissime recitasset, ab eo quaestor est factus' (Anecdoton Holderi, ap. Usener, p. 4).]
[Footnote 22: He himself says, or rather makes Theodoric's grandson say to him, 'Quem primaevum recipiens ad quaestoris officium, mox reperit [Theodoricus] conscientiâ praeditum, et legum eruditione maturum' (Var. ix. 24).]
[Footnote 23: At this time the Illustres actually in office would probably be the Praefectus Praetorio Italiae (Cassiodorus the father), the Praefectus Urbis Romae, the two Magistri Militum in Praesenti, the Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi, the Magister Officiorum, the Quaestor, the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, the Comes Rerum Privatarum, and the two Comites Domesticorum Equitum et Peditum.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the Quaestor's office.]
The Quaestor's duty required him to be beyond all other Ministers the mouthpiece of the Sovereign. In the 'Notitia[24]' the matters under his control are concisely stated to be 'Laws which are to be dictated, and Petitions.'
[Footnote 24: 'Sub dispositione viri illustris Quaestoris
Leges dictandae Preces.
Officium non habet sed adjutores de scriniis quos voluerit.']
To him therefore was assigned the duty (which the British Parliament in its folly assigns to no one) of giving a final revision to the laws which received the Sovereign's signature, and seeing that they were consistent with one another and with previous enactments, and were clothed in fitting language. He replied in the Sovereign's name to the petitions which were presented to him. He also, as we learn from Cassiodorus, had audience with the ambassadors of foreign powers, to whom he addressed suitable and stately harangues, or through whom he forwarded written replies to the letters which they had brought, but always of course speaking or writing in the name of his master. In the performance of these duties he had chiefly to rely on his own intellectual resources as a trained jurist and rhetorician. The large official staff which waited upon the nod of the other great Ministers of State was absent from his apartments[25]; but for the mere manual work of copying, filing correspondence, and the like, he could summon the needful number of clerks from the four great bureaux (scrinia) which were under the control of the Master of the Offices.
[Footnote 25: Officium non habet.]
We have an interesting summary of the Quaestor's duties and privileges from the pen of Cassiodorus himself in the 'Variae' (vi. 5), under the title 'Formula Quaesturae,' and to this document I refer the reader who wishes to complete the picture of the occupations in which the busiest years of the life of Cassiodorus were passed.
[Sidenote: Special utility of a Quaestor to Theodoric.]
To a ruler in Theodoric's position the acquisition of such a Quaestor as Cassiodorus was a most fortunate event. He himself was doubtless unable to speak or to write Latin with fluency. According to the common story, which passes current on the authority of the 'Anonymus Valesii,' he never could learn to write, and had to 'stencil' his signature. I look upon this story with some suspicion, especially because it is also told of his contemporary, the Emperor Justin; but I have no doubt that such literary education as Theodoric ever received was Greek rather than Latin, being imparted during the ten years of his residence as a hostage at Constantinople. Years of marches and countermarches, of battle and foray, at the head of his Ostrogothic warriors, may well have effaced much of the knowledge thus acquired. At any rate, when he descended the Julian Alps, close upon forty years of age, and appeared for the first time in Italy to commence his long and terrible duel with Odovacar, it was too late to learn the language of her sons in such fashion that the first sentence spoken by him in the Hall of Audience should not betray him to his new subjects as an alien and a barbarian.
Yet Theodoric was by no means indifferent to the power of well-spoken words, by no means unconcerned as to the opinion which his Latin-speaking subjects held concerning him. He was no Cambyses or Timour, ruling by the sword alone. His proud title was 'Gothorum Romanorumque Rex,' and the ideal of his hopes, successfully realised during the greater part of his long and tranquil reign, was to be equally the King of either people. He had been fortunate thus far in his Praetorian Praefects. Liberius, a man of whom history knows too little, had amid general applause steered the vessel of the State for the first seven years of the new reign. The elder Cassiodorus, who had succeeded him, seemed likely to follow the same course. But possibly Theodoric had begun to feel the necessity laid upon all rulers of men, not only to be, but also to seem, anxious for the welfare of their subjects. Possibly some dull, unsympathetic Quaestor had failed to present the generous thoughts of the King in a sufficiently attractive shape to the minds of the people. This much at all events we know, that when the young Consiliarius, high-born, fluent, and learned, poured forth his stream of panegyric on 'Our Lord Theodoric'--a panegyric which, to an extent unusual with these orations, reflected the real feelings of the speaker, and all the finest passages of which were the genuine outcome of his own enthusiasm--the great Ostrogoth recognised at once the man whom he was in want of to be the exponent of his thoughts to the people, and by one stroke of wise audacity turned the boyish and comparatively obscure Assessor into the Illustrious Quaestor, one of the great personages of his realm.
[Sidenote: Composition of the VARIAE.]
[Sidenote: Their style.]
The monument of the official life of Cassiodorus is the correspondence styled the 'Variae,' of which an abstract is now submitted to the reader. There is no need to say much here, either as to the style or the thoughts of these letters; a perusal of a few pages of the abstract will give a better idea of both than an elaborate description. The style is undoubtedly a bad one, whether it be compared with the great works of Greek and Latin literature or with our own estimate of excellence in speech. Scarcely ever do we find a thought clothed in clear, precise, closely-fitting words, or a metaphor which really corresponds to the abstract idea that is represented by it. We take up sentence after sentence of verbose and flaccid Latin, analyse them with difficulty, and when at last we come to the central thought enshrouded in them, we too often find that it is the merest and most obvious commonplace, a piece of tinsel wrapped in endless folds of tissue paper. Perhaps from one point of view the study of the style of Cassiodorus might prove useful to a writer of English, as indicating the faults which he has in this age most carefully to avoid. Over and over again, when reading newspaper articles full of pompous words borrowed from Latin through French, when wearied with 'velleities' and 'solidarities' and 'altruisms' and 'homologators,' or when vainly endeavouring to discover the real meaning which lies hidden in a jungle of Parliamentary verbiage, I have said to myself, remembering my similar labour upon the 'Variae,' 'How like this is to Cassiodorus.'
[Sidenote: Lack of humour.]
[Sidenote: The letter about the sucking-fish.]
Intellectually one of the chief deficiencies of our author--a deficiency in which perhaps his age and nation participated--was a lack of humour. It is difficult to think that anyone who possessed a keen sense of humour could have written letters so drolly unsuited to the character of Theodoric, their supposed author, as are some which we find in the 'Variae.' For instance, the King had reason to complain that Faustus, the Praetorian Praefect, was dawdling over the execution of an order which he had received for the shipment of corn from the regions of Calabria and Apulia to Rome. We find the literary Quaestor putting such words as these into the mouth of Theodoric, when reprimanding the lazy official[26]: 'Why is there such great delay in sending your swift ships to traverse the tranquil seas? Though the south wind blows and the rowers are bending to their oars, has the sucking-fish[27] fixed its teeth into the hulls through the liquid waves; or have the shells of the Indian Sea, whose quiet touch is said to hold so firmly that the angry billows cannot loosen it, with like power fixed their lips into your keels? Idle stands the bark though winged by swelling sails; the wind favours her but she makes no way; she is fixed without an anchor, she is bound without a cable; and these tiny animals hinder more than all such prospering circumstances can help. Thus, though the loyal wave may be hastening its course, we are informed that the ship stands fixed on the surface of the sea, and by a strange paradox the swimmer [the ship] is made to remain immovable while the wave is hurried along by movements numberless. Or, to describe the nature of another kind of fish, perchance the sailors in the aforesaid ships have grown dull and torpid by the touch of the torpedo, by which such a deadly chill is struck into the right hand of him who attacks it, that even through the spear by which it is itself wounded, it gives a shock which causes the hand of the striker to remain, though still a living substance, senseless and immovable. I think some such misfortunes as these must have happened to men who are unable to move their own bodies. But I know that in their case the echeneis is corruption trading on delays; the bite of the Indian shell-fish is insatiable cupidity; the torpedo is fraudulent pretence. With perverted ingenuity they manufacture delays that they may seem to have met with a run of ill-luck. Wherefore let your Greatness, whom it specially concerns to look after such men as these, by a speedy rebuke bring them to a better mind. Else the famine which we fear, will be imputed not to the barrenness of the times but to official negligence, whose true child it will manifestly appear.'
[Footnote 26: Var. i. 35.]
[Footnote 27: Echeneis.]
It is not likely that Theodoric ever read a letter like this before affixing to it his (perhaps stencilled) signature. If he did, he must surely have smiled to see his few angry Teutonic words transmuted into this wonderful rhapsody about sucking-fishes and torpedoes and shell-fish in the Indian Sea.
[Sidenote: Character of Cassiodorus.]
The French proverb 'Le style c'est l'homme,' is not altogether true as to the character of Cassiodorus. From his inflated and tawdry style we might have expected to find him an untrustworthy friend and an inefficient administrator. This, however, was not the case. As was before said, his character was not heroic; he was, perhaps, inclined to humble himself unduly before mere power and rank, and he had the fault, common to most rhetoricians, of over-estimating the power of words and thinking that a few fluent platitudes would heal inveterate discords and hide disastrous blunders. But when we have said this we have said the worst. He was, as far as we have any means of judging, a loyal subject, a faithful friend, a strenuous and successful administrator, and an exceptionally far-sighted statesman. His right to this last designation rests upon the part which he bore in the establishment of the Italian Kingdom 'of the Goths and Romans,' founded by the great Theodoric.
[Sidenote: His work in seconding the policy of Theodoric.]
Theodoric, it must always be remembered, had entered Italy not ostensibly as an invader but as a deliverer. He came in pursuance of a compact with the legitimate Emperor of the New Rome, to deliver the Elder Rome and the land of Italy from the dominion of 'the upstart King of Rugians and Turcilingians[28],' Odovacar. The compact, it is true, was loose and indefinite, and contained within itself the germs of that misunderstanding which, forty-seven years later, was developed into a terrible war. Still, for the present, Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, was also in some undefined way legitimate representative of the Old Roman Empire within the borders of Italy. This double aspect of his rule was illustrated by that which (rather than the doubtful Rex Italiae) seems to have been his favourite title, 'Gothorum Romanorumque Rex.'
[Footnote 28: Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, lvii.]
[Sidenote: Theodoric's love of Civilitas.]
The great need of Italy was peace. After a century of wars and rumours of wars; after Alaric, Attila, and Gaiseric had wasted her fields or sacked her capital; after she had been exhausting her strength in hopeless efforts to preserve the dominion of Gaul, Spain, and Africa; after she had groaned under the exactions of the insolent foederati, Roman soldiers only in name, who followed the standards of Ricimer or Odovacar, she needed peace and to be governed with a strong hand, in order to recover some small part of her old material prosperity. These two blessings, peace and a strong government, Theodoric's rule ensured to her. The theory of his government was this, that the two nations should dwell side by side, not fused into one, not subject either to the other, but the Romans labouring at the arts of peace, the Goths wielding for their defence the sword of war. Over all was to be the strong hand of the King of Goths and Romans, repressing the violence of the one nation, correcting the chicanery of the other, and from one and all exacting the strict observance of that which was the object of his daily and nightly cares, CIVILITAS. Of this civilitas--which we may sometimes translate 'good order,' sometimes 'civilisation,' sometimes 'the character of a law-abiding citizen,' but which no English word or phrase fully expresses--the reader of the following letters will hear, even to weariness. But though we may be tired of the phrase, we ought none the less to remember that the thing was that which Italy stood most in need of, that it was secured for her during forty years by the labours of Theodoric and Cassiodorus, and that happiness, such as she knew not again for many centuries, was the result.
[Sidenote: Foresight of Cassiodorus in aiding this policy.]
But the theory of a warrior caste of Goths and a trading and labouring caste of Romans was not flattering to the national vanity of a people who, though they had lost all relish for fighting, could not forget the great deeds of their forefathers. This was no doubt the weak point of the new State-system, though one cannot say that it is a weakness which need have been fatal if time enough had been given for the working out of the great experiment, and for Roman and Goth to become in Italy, as they did become in Spain, one people. The grounds upon which the praise of far-seeing statesmanship may be claimed for Cassiodorus are, that notwithstanding the bitter taste which it must have had in his mouth, as in the mouth of every educated Roman, he perceived that here was the best medicine for the ills of Italy. All attempts to conjure with the great name of the Roman Empire could only end in subjection to the really alien rule of Byzantium. All attempts to rouse the religious passions of the Catholic against the heretical intruders were likely to benefit the Catholic but savage Frank. The cruel sufferings of the Italians at the hands of the Heruli of Belisarius and from the ravages of the Alamannic Brethren are sufficient justification of the soundness of Cassiodorus' view that Theodoric's State-system was the one point of hope for Italy.
[Sidenote: His religious tolerance.]
Allusion has been made in the last paragraph to the religious differences which divided the Goths from the Italians. It is well known that Theodoric was an Arian, but an Arian of the most tolerant type, quite unlike the bitter persecutors who reigned at Toulouse and at Carthage. During the last few years of his reign, indeed, when his mind was perhaps in some degree failing, he was tempted by the persecuting policy of the Emperor Justin into retaliatory measures of persecution towards his Catholic subjects, but as a rule his policy was eminently fair and even-handed towards the professors of the two hostile creeds, and even towards the generally proscribed nation of the Jews. So conspicuous to all the world was his desire to hold the balance perfectly even between the two communions, that it was said of him that he beheaded an orthodox deacon who was singularly dear to him, because he had professed the Arian faith in order to win his favour. But this story, though told by a nearly contemporary writer[29], is, it may be hoped, mere Saga.
[Footnote 29: Theodorus Lector (circa 550), Eccl. Hist. ii. 18. Both he and some later writers who borrow from him call the King [Greek: Theoderichos ho Aphros]; why, it is impossible to say.]
[Sidenote: This did not proceed from indifference.]
The point which we may note is, that this policy of toleration or rather of absolute fairness between warring creeds, though not initiated by Cassiodorus, seems to have thoroughly commended itself to his reason and conscience. It is from his pen that we get those golden words which may well atone for many platitudes and some ill-judged display of learning: Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus[30]. And this tolerant temper of mind is the more to be commended, because it did not proceed from any indifference on his part to the subjects of religious controversy. Cassiodorus was evidently a devout and loyal Catholic. Much the larger part of his writings is of a theological character, and the thirty-five years of his life which he passed in a monastery were evidently
'Bound each to each in natural piety'
with the earlier years passed at Court and in the Council-chamber.
[Footnote 30: Var. ii. 27.]
[Sidenote: Date of the commencement of the Variae.]
We cannot trace as we should like to do the precise limits of time by which the official career of Cassiodorus was bounded. The 'Various Letters' are evidently not arranged in strict chronological order, and to but few of them is it possible to affix an exact date. There are two or three, however, which require especial notice, because some authors have assigned them to a date previous to that at which, as I believe, the author entered the service of the Emperor.
[Sidenote: Letter to Anastasius.]
The first letter of the whole series is addressed to the Emperor Anastasius. It has been sometimes connected with the embassy of Faustus in 493, or with that of Festus in 497, to the Court of Constantinople, the latter of which embassies resulted in the transmission to Theodoric of 'the ornaments of the palace' (that is probably the regal insignia) which Odovacar had surrendered to Zeno. But the language of the letter in question, which speaks of 'causas iracundiae,' does not harmonise well with either of these dates, since there was then, as far as we know, no quarrel between Ravenna and Constantinople. On the other hand, it would fit perfectly with the state of feeling between the two Courts in 505, after Sabinian the general of Anastasius had been defeated by the troops of Theodoric under Pitzias at the battle of Horrea Margi; or in 508, when the Byzantine ships had made a raid on Apulia and plundered Tarentum. To one of these dates it should probably be referred, its place at the beginning of the collection being due to the exalted rank of the receiver of the letter, not to considerations of chronology.
[Sidenote: Letters to Clovis.]
The fortieth and forty-first letters of the Second Book relate to the sending of a harper to Clovis, or, as Cassiodorus calls him, Luduin, King of the Franks. In the earlier letter Boethius is directed to procure such a harper (citharoedus), and to see that he is a first-rate performer. In the later, Theodoric congratulates his royal brother-in-law on his victory over the Alamanni, adjures him not to pursue the panic-stricken fugitives who have taken refuge within the Ostrogothic territory, and sends ambassadors to introduce the harper whom Boethius has provided. It used to be thought that these letters must be referred to 496, the year of the celebrated victory of Clovis over the Alamanni, commonly, but incorrectly, called the battle of Tulbiacum. But this was a most improbable theory, for it was difficult to understand how a boy of sixteen (and that was the age of Boethius in 496) should have attained such eminence as a musical connoisseur as to be entrusted with the task of selecting the citharoedus. And in a very recent monograph[31] Herr von Schubert has shown, I think convincingly, that the last victory of Clovis over the Alamanni, and their migration to Raetia within the borders of Theodoric's territory, occurred not in 496 but a few years later, probably about 503 or 504. It is true that Gregory of Tours (to whom the earlier battle is all-important, as being the event which brought about the conversion of Clovis) says nothing about this later campaign; but to those who know the fragmentary and incomplete character of this part of his history, such an omission will not appear an important argument.
[Footnote 31: Die Uterwerfung der Alamannen: Strassburg, 1884.]
[Sidenote: Letters to Gaulish princes.]
The letters written in Theodoric's name to Clovis, to Alaric II, to Gundobad of Burgundy, and to other princes, in order to prevent the outbreak of a war between the Visigoths and the Franks, have been by some authors[32] assigned to a date some years before the war actually broke out; but though this cannot, perhaps, be disproved, it seems to me much more probable that they were written in the early part of 507 on the eve of the war between Clovis and Alaric, which they were powerless to avert.
[Footnote 32: Especially Binding, Geschichte des Burgundisch-Romanischen Königreichs, p. 181.]
[Sidenote: Duration of Cassiodorus' office.]
More difficult than the question of the beginning of the Quaestorship of Cassiodorus is that of its duration and its close. It was an office which was in its nature an annual one. At the commencement of each fresh year 'of the Indiction,' that is on the first of September of the calendar year, a Quaestor was appointed; but there does not seem to have been anything to prevent the previous holder of the office from being re-appointed. In the case of Cassiodorus, the Quaestor after Theodoric's own heart, his intimate friend and counsellor, this may have been done for several years running, or he may have apparently retired from office for a year and then resumed it. It is clear, that whether in or out of office he had always, as the King's friend, a large share in the direction of State affairs. He himself says, in a letter supposed to be addressed to himself after the death of Theodoric[33]: 'Non enim proprios fines sub te ulla dignitas custodivit;' and that this was the fact we cannot doubt. Whatever his nominal dignity might be, or if for the moment he possessed no ostensible office at all, he was still virtually what we should call the Prime Minister of the Ostrogothic King[34].
[Footnote 33: ix. 24.]
[Footnote 34: Thorbecke has pointed out (pp. 40-41) that we possess letters written by Cassiodorus to four Quaestors before the year 510, and that therefore the fact of others holding the nominal office of Quaestor did not circumscribe his activity as Secretary to Theodoric.]
[Sidenote: Consulship of Cassiodorus, 514.]
In the year 514 he received an honour which, notwithstanding that it was utterly divorced from all real authority, was still one of the highest objects of the ambition of every Roman noble: he was hailed as Consul Ordinarius, and gave his name to the year. For some reason which is not stated, possibly because the City of Constantinople was in that year menaced by the insurrection of Vitalian, no colleague in the East was nominated to share his dignity; and the entry in the Consular Calendars is therefore 'Senatore solo Consule.'
In his own Chronicle, Cassiodorus adds the words,'Me etiam Consule in vestrorum laude temporum, adunato clero vel [= et] populo, Romanae Ecclesiae rediit optata concordia.' This sentence no doubt relates to the dissensions which had agitated the Roman Church ever since the contested Papal election of Symmachus and Laurentius in the year 498. Victory had been assured to Symmachus by the Synod of 501, but evidently the feelings of hatred then aroused had still smouldered on, especially perhaps among the Senators and high nobles of Rome, who had for the most part adopted the candidature of Laurentius. Now, on the death of Symmachus (July 18, 514) the last embers of the controversy were extinguished, and the genial influence of Cassiodorus, Senator by name and Consul by office, was successfully exerted to induce nobles, 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 doubt that the general intention of Theodoric was to soothe the wounded pride and flatter the vanity of the Roman Senators by every means in his power: and for this purpose no one could be so well fitted as Cassiodorus, Senator by name and by office, descendant of many generations of Roman nobles, and master of such exuberant rhetoric that it was difficult then, as it is often impossible now, to extract any definite meaning from his sonorous periods.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus Patrician.]
It was possibly upon his laying down the Consulship, that Cassiodorus received the dignity of Patrician--a dignity only, for in itself it seems to have conferred neither wealth nor power. Yet a title which had been borne by Ricimer, Odovacar, and Theodoric himself might well excite the ambition of Theodoric's subject. If our conjecture be correct that it was conferred upon Cassiodorus in the year 515, he received it at an earlier age than his father, to whom only about ten or eleven years before he had written the letter announcing his elevation to this high dignity.
[Sidenote: The Chronicon.]
Five years after his Consulate, Cassiodorus undertook a little piece of literary labour which he does not appear to have held in high account himself (since he does not include it in the list of his works), and which has certainly added but little to his fame. This was his 'Chronicon,' containing an abstract of the history of the world from the deluge down to A.D. 519, the year of the Consulship of the Emperor Justin, and of Theodoric's son-in-law Eutharic. This Chronicle is for the most part founded upon, or rather copied from, the well-known works of Eusebius and Prosper, the copying being unfortunately not correctly done. More than this, Cassiodorus has attempted with little judgment to combine the mode of reckoning by Consular years and by years of Emperors. As he is generally two or three years out in his reckoning of the former, this proceeding has the curious result of persistently throwing some Consulships of the reigning Emperor into the reign of his predecessor.[35] Thus Probus is Consul for two years under Aurelian, and for one year under Tacitus; both the two Consulships of Carus and the first of Diocletian are under Probus, while Diocletian's second Consulship is under Carinus and Numerianus; and so forth. It is wonderful that so intelligent a person as Cassiodorus did not see that combinations of this kind were false upon the face of them.
[Footnote 35: It need hardly be explained that, as a matter of compliment to the reigning Emperor, the first Consulship that fell vacant after his accession to the throne was (I believe invariably) filled by him, and that though he might sometimes have held the office of Consul before his assumption of the diadem, this was not often the case. Certainly, in the instances given above, Probus, Carus, and Diocletian held no Consulships till after they had been saluted as Emperors.]
When the Chronicle gets nearer to the compiler's own times it becomes slightly more interesting, but also slightly less fair. Throughout the fourth century a few little remarks are interspersed in the dry list of names and dates, the general tendency of which is to praise up the Gothic nation or to extenuate their faults and reverses. The battle of Pollentia (402[36]) is unhesitatingly claimed as a Gothic victory; the clemency of Alaric at the capture of Rome (410) is magnified; the valour of the Goths is made the cause of the defeat of Attila in the Catalaunian plains (451); the name of Gothic Eutharic is put before that of Byzantine Justin in the consular list; and so forth. Upon the whole, as has been already said, the work cannot be considered as adding to the reputation of its author; nor can it be defended from the terrible attack which has been made upon it by that scholar of our own day whose opinion upon such a subject stands the highest, Theodor Mommsen[37]. Only, when he makes this unfortunate Chronicle reflect suspicion on the other works of Cassiodorus, and especially on the Gothic History[38], the German scholar seems to me to chastise the busy Minister more harshly than he deserves.
[Footnote 36: Clinton's date for this battle, 403, differs from that assigned by Cassiodorus, and is, in my judgment, erroneous.]
[Footnote 37: Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Klasse der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, iii. 547-696.]
[Footnote 38: 'Dass die ganze Procedur von der übelsten Art ist und den viel gefeierten gothischen Historiker in jeder weise compromittirt, bedarf keiner Ausaneindersetzung' (l.c. 564).]
[Sidenote: The Gothic History.]
I have just alluded to the Gothic History of Cassiodorus. It was apparently shortly after the composition of his Chronicle[39] that this, in some respects his most important work, was compiled and arranged according to his accustomed habit in twelve books. His own estimate--and it is not a low one--of the value of this performance is expressed in a letter which he makes his young Sovereign Athalaric address to the Senate on his promotion to the Praefecture[40]: 'He extended his labours even to our remote ancestry, learning by his reading that which scarcely the hoar memories of our forefathers retained. He drew forth from their hiding-place the Kings of the Goths, hidden by long forgetfulness. He restored the Amals to their proper place with the lustre of his own[41] lineage (?), evidently proving that up to the seventeenth generation we have had kings for our ancestors. He made the origin of the Goths a part of Roman history, collecting as it were into one wreath all the flowery growth which had before been scattered through the plains of many books. Consider therefore what love he showed to you [the Senate] in praising us, he who showed that the nation of your Sovereign had been from antiquity a marvellous people; so that ye, who from the days of your forefathers have ever been deemed noble, are yet ruled over by the ancient progeny of Kings[42].'
[Footnote 39: It could not have been written, at any rate in its present shape, before 516, because Athalaric's birth is mentioned in it. I prefer Jordanes' date for this event, 516 or 517, to that given by Procopius, 518. On the other hand, Usener proves (p. 74), from the reference to it in the Anecdoton Holderi, that it could not have been written after 521.]
[Footnote 40: Var. ix. 25.]
[Footnote 41: 'Iste Amalos cum generis sui claritate restituit.' Perhaps it is better to take 'sui' as equivalent to 'illorum,' and translate 'their lineage.']
[Footnote 42: 'Ut sicut fuistis a majoribus vestris semper nobiles aestimati, ita vobis rerum antiqua progenies imperaret.' For 'rerum' we must surely read 'regum.']
[Sidenote: Its purpose.]
In reading this estimate by Cassiodorus of his own performance, we can see at once that it lacked that first of all conditions precedent for the attainment of absolute historic truth, complete impartiality[43]. Like Hume and like Macaulay Cassiodorus wrote his history with a purpose. We may describe that purpose as two-fold:
[Footnote 43: My meaning would be better expressed by the useful German word 'voraussetzungslosigkeit,' freedom from a foregone conclusion.]
(1) To vindicate the claim of the Goths to rank among the historic nations of antiquity by bringing them into some sort of connection with Greece and Rome ('Originem Gothicam historiam fecit esse Romanam'); and (2) among the Goths, to exalt as highly as possible the family of the Amals, that family from which Theodoric had sprung, and to string as many regal names as possible upon the Amal chain ('Evidenter ostendens in decimam septimam progeniem stirpem nos habere regalem').
I have said that the possession of a purpose like this is unfavourable to the attainment of absolute historic truth; but the aim which Cassiodorus proposed to himself was a lofty one, being in fact the reconciliation of the past and the future of the world by showing to the outworn Latin race that the new blood which was being poured into it by the northern nations came, like its own, from a noble ancestry: and, for us, the labour to which it stimulated him has been full of profit, since to it we owe something like one half of our knowledge of the Teutonic ancestors of Modern Europe.
[Sidenote: Confusion between Goths and Getae.]
The much-desired object of 'making the origin of Gothic history Roman' was effected chiefly by attributing to the Goths all that Cassiodorus found written in classic authors concerning the Getae or the Scythians. The confusion between Goths and Getae, though modern ethnologists are nearly unanimous in pronouncing it to be a confusion between two utterly different nations, is not one for which Cassiodorus is responsible, since it had been made at least a hundred years before his time. When the Emperor Claudius II won his great victories over the Goths in the middle of the Third Century, he was hailed rightly enough by the surname of Gothicus; but when at the beginning of the Fifth Century the feeble Emperors Arcadius and Honorius wished to celebrate a victory which, as they vainly hoped, had effectually broken the power of the Goths, the words which they inscribed upon the Arch of Triumph were 'Quod Getarum nationem in omne aevum docuere extingui.' In the poems of Claudian, and generally in all the contemporary literature of the time, the regular word for the countrymen of Alaric is Getae.
[Sidenote: The term Scythian.]
The Greek historians, on the other hand, freely applied the general term Scythian--as they had done at any time since the Scythian campaign of Darius Hystaspis--to any barbarian nation living beyond the Danube and the Cimmerian Bosporus. With these two clues, or imaginary clues, in his hand, Cassiodorus could traverse a considerable part of the border-land of classical antiquity. The battles between the Scythians and the Egyptians, the story of the Amazons, Telephus son of Hercules and nephew of Priam, the defeat of Cyrus by Tomyris, and the unsuccessful expedition of Darius--all were connected with Gothic history by means of that easily stretched word, Scythia. Then comes Sitalces, King of Thrace, who makes war on Perdiccas of Macedon; and then, 'in the time of Sylla,' a certain wise philosopher-king of Dacia, Diceneus by name, in whose character and history Cassiodorus perhaps outlined his own ideal of wisdom swaying brute force. With these and similar stories culled from classical authors Cassiodorus appears to have filled up the interval--which was to him of absolutely uncertain duration--between the Gothic migration from the Baltic to the Euxine and their appearance as conquerors and ravagers in the eastern half of the Roman Empire in the middle of the third century of the Christian era. Now, soothing as it may have been to the pride of a Roman subject of Theodoric to be informed that his master's ancestors had fought at the war of Troy and humbled the pride of Perdiccas, to a scientific historian these Scytho-Getic histories culled from Herodotus and Trogus are of little or no value, and his first step in the process of enquiry is to eliminate them from 'Gothica historia,' thus making it, as far as he can, not 'Romana.' The question then arises whether there was another truly Gothic element in the history of Cassiodorus, and if so, what value can be attached to it. Thus enquiring we soon find, both before and after this intrusive Scytho-Getic element, matter of quite a different kind, which has often much of the ring of the true Teutonic Saga. It is reasonable to believe that here Cassiodorus, whose mission it was to reconcile Roman and Goth, and who could not have achieved this end by altering the history of the less civilised people out of all possibility of recognition by its own chieftains and warriors, has really interwoven in his work some part of the songs and Sagas which were still current among the older men who had shared the wanderings of Theodoric. This legendary portion, which Cassiodorus himself perhaps half despised, as being gathered not from books but from the lips of rude minstrels, is in fact the only part of his work which has any scientific value.
[Sidenote: The Amal pedigree.]
In his glorification of the Amal line, Cassiodorus follows more closely these genuine national traditions than in his history of the Gothic people. References to Herodotus and Trogus would have been here obviously out of place, and he accordingly puts before us a pedigree fashioned on the same model as those which we find in the Saxon Chronicle, and therefore probably genuine. By genuine of course is meant a pedigree which was really current and accepted among the people over whom Theodoric ruled. How many of the links which form it represent real historical personages is a matter about which we may almost be said neither to know nor care. We see that it begins in the approved fashion with 'Non puri homines sed semidei id est Anses[44],' and that the first of these half-divine ancestors is named Gaut, evidently the eponymous hero of the Gothic people. Some of the later links--Amal, Ostrogotha, Athal--have the same appearance of names coined to embody facts of the national consciousness. At the end of the genealogy appear the undoubtedly historical names of the immediate ancestors of Theodoric. It is noteworthy that several, in fact the majority of the names of Kings who figure in early Gothic history, are not included in this genealogy. While this fact permits us to doubt whether Cassiodorus has not exaggerated the pre-eminence of the Amal race in early days, it must be admitted to be also an evidence of the good faith with which he preserved the national tradition on these points. Had he been merely inventing, it would have been easy to include every name of a distinguished Gothic King among the progenitors of his Sovereign.
[Footnote 44: Jordanes, De Reb. Get. xiii.]
[Sidenote: Abstract by Jordanes.]
Such then was the general purpose of the Gothic History of Cassiodorus. The book itself has perished--a tantalising loss when we consider how many treatises from the same pen have been preserved to us which we could well have spared. But we can speak, as will be seen from the preceding remarks, with considerable confidence as to its plan and purpose, because we possess in the well-known treatise of Jordanes 'On the Origin of the Goths[45]' an abbreviated copy, executed it is true by a very inferior hand, but still manifestly preserving some of the features of the original. It will not be necessary here to go into the difficult question as to the personality of this writer, which has been debated at considerable length and with much ingenuity by several German authors[46]. It is enough to say that Jordanes, who was, according to his own statement, 'agrammatus,' a man of Gothic descent, a notary, and then a monk[47], on the alleged request of his friend Castalius, 'compressed the twelve books of Senator, de origine actibusque Getarum, bringing down the history from olden times to our own days by kings and generations, into one little pamphlet.' Still, according to his statement, which there can be little doubt is here thoroughly false, he had the loan of the Gothic History for only three days from the steward of Cassiodorus, and wrote chiefly or entirely from his recollection of this hasty perusal[48]. He says that he added some suitable passages from the Greek and Latin historians, but his own range of historical reading was evidently so narrow that we may fairly suspect these additions to have been of the slenderest possible dimensions. Upon the whole, there can be little doubt that it is a safe rule to attribute everything that is good or passable in this little treatise to Cassiodorus, and everything that is very bad, childish, and absurd in it to Jordanes.
[Footnote 45: 'De Rebus Geticis,' or 'De Gothorum Origine,' is the name by which this little treatise is usually known. It seems to be doubtful, however, what title, if any, Jordanes himself prefixed to it. Mommsen calls it simply 'Getica.']
[Footnote 46: Especially Schirren, 'De Ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat' (Dorpat, 1858); Sybel, 'De Fontibus Libri Jordanis' (Berlin, 1838); and Köpke, 'Die Anfänge des Königthums bei den Gothen' (Berlin, 1859).]
[Footnote 47: Possibly in the end Bishop of Crotona, or a Defensor of the Roman Church, since we find a Jordanes in each of these positions; but this is mere guesswork, and to me neither theory seems probable.]
[Footnote 48: 'Sed ut non mentiar, ad triduanam lectionem dispensatoris ejus beneficio libros ipsos antehac relegi.' Notwithstanding the 'ut non mentiar,' most of those who have enquired into the subject have come to the opinion which is bluntly expressed by Usener (p. 73), 'Die dreitägige Frist die Jordanes zur Benutzung der 12 Bücher gehabt haben will, ist natürlich Schwindel.' Even by an expert précis-writer a loan of three months would be much more probably needed for the purpose indicated by Jordanes than one of three days.]
[Sidenote: Temporary retirement from official life (?).]
The literary labours of Cassiodorus, of which the Gothic History was one of the fruits, were probably continued for two or three years after its completion[49]. At least there is reason to believe that he was not actively engaged in the service of the State during those terrible years (524 and 525) in which the failing intellect of Theodoric, goaded almost to madness by Justin's persecution of his Arian co-religionists, condescended to ignoble measures of retaliation, which brought him into collision with Senate and Pope, and in the end tarnished his fame by the judicial murder of Boethius and Symmachus. It was fortunate indeed for Cassiodorus if he was during this time, perhaps because of his unwillingness to help the King to his own hurt, enjoying an interval of literary retirement at Squillace. His honour must have suffered if he had abetted the intolerant policy of Theodoric; his life might have been forfeit if he had openly opposed it.
[Footnote 49: This was probably 521 at latest.]
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus as Master of the Offices, 526.]
Whatever may have been the cause of the temporary obscuration of Cassiodorus, he was soon again shining in all the splendour of official dignity; for when Theodoric died, his old and trusted minister was holding--probably not for the first time in his official career[50]--the great place of Master of the Offices.
[Footnote 50: The language of Cassiodorus in Var. ix. 24 implies that he had held this office for a considerable time before the death of Theodoric. Usener thinks that he was made Magister Officiorum for the first time about the year 518.]
The Magister Officiorum, whose relation to the other members of the Cabinet of the Sovereign was somewhat indefinite, and who was in fact constantly trying to enlarge the circle of his authority at their expense, was at the head of the Civil Service of the Roman Empire, and afterwards occupied a similar position in the Ostrogothic State. It was said of him by the Byzantine orator Priscus (himself a man who had been engaged in important embassies), 'Of all the counsels of the Emperor the Magister is a partaker, inasmuch as the messengers and interpreters and the soldiers employed on guard at the palace are ranged under him.' Quite in harmony with this general statement are the more precise indications of the 'Notitia.' There, 'under the disposition of the illustrious Magister Officiorum,' we find five Scholae, which seem to have been composed of household troops[51]. Then comes the great Schola of the Agentes in rebus and their deputies--a mighty army of 'king's messengers,' who swarmed through all the Provinces of the Empire, executing the orders of the Sovereign, and earning gold and hatred from the helpless Provincials among whom their errands lay. In addition to these the four great stationary bureaux--the Scrinium Memoriae, Scrinium Dispositionum, Scrinium Epistolarum, and Scrinium Libellorum--the offices whose duty it was to conduct the correspondence of the Sovereign with foreign powers, and to answer the petitions of his own subjects, all owned the Master of the Offices as their head. Moreover, the great arsenals (of which there were six in Italy at Concordia, Verona, Mantua, Cremona, Ticinum, and Lucca) received their orders from the same official. An anomalous and too widely dispersed range of functions this seems according to our ideas, including something of the Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, something of the Home Secretaryship, and something of the War Office and the Horse Guards. Yet, as if this were not enough, there was also transferred to him from the office of the Praetorian Praefect the superintendence of the Cursus Publicus, that excellent institution by which facilities for intercourse were provided between the capital and the most distant Provinces, relays of post-horses being kept at every town, available for use by those who bore properly signed 'letters of evection.' Thus to the multifarious duties of the Master of the Offices was added in effect the duty of Postmaster-General. It was found however in practice to be an inconvenient arrangement for the Master of the Offices to have the control of the services of the 'public horses,' while the Praetorian Praefect remained responsible for the supply of their food; and the charge of the Cursus Publicus was accordingly retransferred--at any rate in the Eastern Empire--to the office of the Praefect, though the letters of evection still required the counter-signature of the Master[52].
[Footnote 51: They are 'Scutariorum prima, secunda et tertia, armaturarum seniorum et gentilium seniorum' (Notitia Occidentis, cap. ix.).]
[Footnote 52: This is the account of the matter given by Lydus (De Magistratibus ii. 10); but as the Notitia (Or. xi.) puts the 'Curiosus Cursus Publici Praesentalis' under the disposition of the Magister Officiorum, the retransfer had probably not then taken place. It would seem also from the Formula of Cassiodorus (Var. vi. 6) that in his time the Magister Officiorum still had the charge of the Cursus Publicus.]
[Sidenote: Death of Theodoric, Aug. 30, 526.]
Such was the position of Cassiodorus when, on the 30th of August, 526, by the death of Theodoric, he lost the master whom he had served so long and so faithfully. The difficulties which beset the new reign are pretty clearly indicated in the letters which Cassiodorus published in the name of the young King Athalaric, Theodoric's grandson, and which are to be found in the Eighth Book of the 'Variae.' Athalaric himself being only a boy of eight or ten years of age, supreme power was vested in his mother Amalasuentha, with what title we are unable to say, but apparently not with that of Queen. This Princess, a woman of great and varied accomplishments, perhaps once a pupil, certainly a friend, of Cassiodorus, ruled entirely in accordance with the maxims of his statesmanship, and endeavoured with female impulsiveness to carry into effect his darling scheme of Romanising the Goths. During the whole of her regency we may doubtless consider Cassiodorus as virtually her Prime Minister, and the eight years which it occupied were without doubt that portion of his life in which he exercised the most direct and unquestioned influence on State affairs.
[Sidenote: Services of Cassiodorus to the Regent Amalasuentha.]
His services at the commencement of the new reign will be best described in his own words: 'Nostris quoque principiis[53]' (the letter is written in Athalaric's name) 'quanto se labore concessit, cum novitas regni multa posceret ordinari? Erat solus ad universa sufficiens. Ipsum dictatio publica, ipsum consilia nostra poscebant; et labore ejus actum est ne laboraret imperium. Reperimus eum quidem Magistrum sed implevit nobis Quaestoris officium: et mercedes justissima devotione persolvens, cautelam, quam ab auctore nostro didicerat, libenter haeredis utilitatibus exhibebat[54].'
[Footnote 53: Variarum ix. 25.]
[Footnote 54: The meaning apparently is: 'The experience which he had gained in Theodoric's service was employed for the advantage of his grandson.']
[Sidenote: Fears of invasion.]
Cassiodorus then goes on to describe how he laboured for his young Sovereign with the sword as well as with the pen. Some hostile invasion was dreaded, perhaps from the Franks, or, more probably, from the Vandals, whose relations with the Ostrogoths at that time were strained, owing to the murder of Theodoric's sister Amalafrida by Hilderic the Vandal King. Cassiodorus provided ships and equipped soldiers at his own expense, probably for the defence of his beloved Province of Bruttii. The alarm of war passed away, but difficulties appear to have arisen owing to the sudden cancellation of the contracts which had been entered into when hostilities seemed imminent; and to these difficulties Cassiodorus tells us that he brought his trained experience as an administrator and a judge, resolving them so as to give satisfaction to all who were concerned.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus as Praetorian Praefect, 533.]
Seven years of Amalasuentha's regency thus passed, and now at length, at fifty-three years of age, Cassiodorus was promoted (Sept. 1, 533) to the most distinguished place which a subject could occupy. He received from Amalasuentha the office of Praetorian Praefect. As thirty-three years had elapsed since his father was invested with the same dignity, we may fairly conjecture that father and son both climbed this eminence at the same period of their lives; yet, considering the extraordinary credit which the younger Cassiodorus enjoyed at Court, we might have expected that he would have been clothed with the Praefecture before he attained the fifty-third year of his age. And, in fact, he hints in the letter composed by him, in which he informs himself of his own elevation[55], that that elevation had been somewhat too long delayed, though the reason which he alleges for the delay (namely, that the people might greet the new Praefect the more heartily[56]) is upon the face of it not the true cause.
[Footnote 55: Var. ix. 24.]
[Footnote 56: 'Diutius quidem differendo pro te cunctorum vota lassavimus, ut benevolentiam in te probaremus generalitatis, et cunctis desiderabilior advenires.']
[Sidenote: Office of the Praetorian Praefect.]
The majesty of the Praetorian Praefect's office is fully dwelt upon and its functions described in a letter in the following collection[57], to which the reader is referred. Originally only the chief officer of those Praetorian troops in Rome by whom the Emperor was guarded, until, as was so often the case, he was in some fit of petulance by the same pampered sentinels dethroned, the Praefectus Praetorio had gradually become more and more of a judge, less and less of a soldier. In the great changes wrought by Constantine the Praetorian guards disappeared--somewhat in the same fashion after which the Janissaries were removed by Sultan Mahmoud. The Praetorian Praefect's dignity, however, survived, and though he lost every shred of military command he became or continued to be the first civil servant of the Empire. Cassiodorus is fond of comparing him to Joseph at the Court of Pharaoh, nor is the comparison an inapt one. In the Constantinople of our own day the Grand Vizier holds a position not altogether unlike that which the Praefect held in the Court of Arcadius and Theodosius. 'The office of this Praefect,' said one who had spent his life as one of his subordinates[58],' is like the Ocean, encircling all other offices and ministering to all their needs. The Consulate is indeed higher in rank than the Praefecture, but less in power. The Praefect wears a mandye, or woollen cloak, dyed with the purple of Cos, and differing from the Emperor's only in the fact that it reaches not to the feet but to the knees. Girt with his sword he takes his seat as President of the Senate. When that body has assembled, the chiefs of the army fall prostrate before the Praefect, who raises them and kisses each in turn, in order to express his desire to be on good terms with the military power. Nay, even the Emperor himself walks (or till lately used to walk) on foot from his palace to meet the Praefect as he moves slowly towards him at the head of the Senate. The insignia of the Praefect's office are his lofty chariot, his golden reed-case [pen-holder], weighing one hundred pounds, his massive silver inkstand, and silver bowl on a tripod of the same metal to receive the petitions of suitors. Three official yachts wait upon his orders, and convey him from the capital to the neighbouring Provinces.'
[Footnote 57: Var. vi. 3.]
[Footnote 58: Joannes Lydus, De Dignitatibus ii. 7, 8, 9, 13, 14.]
[Sidenote: The Praetorian Praefect as Judge of Appeal.]
The personage thus highly placed had a share in the government of the State, a share which the Master of the Offices was for ever trying to diminish, but which, in the hands of one who like Cassiodorus was persona grata at the Court, might be made not only important but predominant[59]. The chief employment, however, of the ordinary Praefectus Praetorio consisted in hearing appeals from the Governors of the Provinces. When the magical words 'Provoco ad Caesarem' had been uttered, it was in most cases before the Praetorian Praefect that the appeal was practically heard; and when the Praetorian Praefect had pronounced his decision, no appeal from that was permitted, even to the Emperor himself[60].
[Footnote 59: Bethmann Hollweg (pp. 75, 76) enumerates the functions of the Praetorian Praefect thus: '(1) Legislative. He promulgated the Imperial laws, and issued edicts which had almost the force of laws. (2) Financial. The general tax (indictio, delegatio) ordered by the Emperor for the year, was proclaimed by each Praefect for his own Praefecture. Through his officials he took part in the levy of the tax, and had a special State-chest (arca praetoria) for the proceeds. (3) Administrative. The Praefect proposed the names of provincial governors, handed to them their salaries, had a general oversight of them, issued rescripts on the information furnished by them, and could as their ordinary Judge inflict punishments upon them, even depose them from their offices, and temporarily nominate substitutes to act in their places. (4) Judicial, as the highest Judge of Appeal.']
[Footnote 60: See authorities quoted by Bethmann Hollweg, pp. 79, 80.]
[Sidenote: Letters written during the Praefecture of Cassiodorus.]
Cassiodorus held the post of Praetorian Praefect, amid various changes in the fortunes of the State, from 533 to 538, or perhaps a year or two longer. Of his activity in the domain of internal administration, the Eleventh and Twelfth Books of the 'Variae' give a vivid and interesting picture. Unfortunately, neither those books nor the Tenth Book of the same collection, which contains the letters written by him during the same time in the names of the successive Gothic Sovereigns, give any sufficient information as to the real course of public events. Great misfortunes, great crimes, and the movements of great armies are covered over in these documents by a veil of unmeaning platitudes and hypocritical compliments. In order to enable the student to 'read between the lines,' and to pierce through the verbiage of these letters to the facts which they were meant to hint at or to conceal, it will be necessary briefly to describe the political history of the period as we learn it from the narratives of Procopius and Jordanes--narratives which may be inaccurate in a few minor details but are doubtless correct in their main outlines.
[Sidenote: Opposition to Romanising policy of Amalasuentha.]
The Romanising policy of the cultivated but somewhat self-willed Princess Amalasuentha met with considerable opposition on the part of her Gothic subjects. Above all, they objected to the bookish education which she was giving to her son, the young King. They declared that it was entirely contrary to the maxims of Theodoric that a young Goth should be trembling before the strap of a pedagogue when he ought to be learning to look unfalteringly on spear and sword. These representations were so vigorously made, and by speakers of such high rank in the State, that Amalasuentha was compelled to listen to them, to remove her son from the society of his teachers, and to allow him to associate with companions of his own age, who, not being wisely chosen, soon initiated him in every kind of vice and dissipation.
[Sidenote: Amalasuentha puts three Gothic nobles to death.]
The Princess, who had not forgiven the leaders of the Gothic party for their presumptuously offered counsels, singled out three of the most powerful nobles who were at the head of that party and sent them into honourable banishment at the opposite ends of Italy. Finding, however, that they were still holding communication with one another, she sent to the Emperor Justinian to ask if he would give her an asylum in his dominions if she required it, and then gave orders for the secret assassination of the three noblemen. The coup d'état succeeded: she had no need to flee the country; and the ship bearing the royal treasure, which amounted to 40,000 pounds weight of gold, which she had sent to Dyrrhachium to await her possible flight, was ordered to return home.
[Sidenote: Embassies between Ravenna and Constantinople.]
Athalaric's health was now rapidly failing, owing to his licentious excesses, and Amalasuentha, fearing that after his death her own life might be in danger, began again secretly to negotiate with Justinian for the entire surrender of the kingdom of Italy into his hands, on receiving an assurance of shelter and maintenance at the Court of Byzantium. These negotiations were masked by others of a more public kind, in which Justinian claimed the Sicilian fortress of Lilybaeum, which had once belonged to the Vandals; insisted on the surrender of some Huns, deserters from the army of Africa; and demanded redress for the sack by the Goths of the Moesian city of Gratiana. These claims Amalasuentha met publicly with a reply as brave and uncompromising as her most patriotic subjects could desire, but in private, as has been already said, she was prepared, for an adequate assurance of personal safety, to barter away all the rights and liberties of her Italian subjects, Roman as well as Gothic, and to allow her father's hard-earned kingdom to sink into a mere dependency of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Death of Athalaric, Oct. 2, 534.]
Such was the position of affairs when on the 2nd October 534, little more than a year after Cassiodorus had donned the purple of the Praefect, Athalaric died, and by his death the whole attitude of the parties to the negotiations was changed. The power to rule, and with it the very power to make terms of any kind with the Emperor, was in danger of slipping from the hands of Amalasuentha. The principle of female sovereignty was barely accepted by any Teutonic tribe. Evidently the Ostrogoths had not accepted it, or Amalasuentha would have ruled as Queen in her own right instead of as Regent for her son. In order to strengthen her position, and ensure her acceptance as Sovereign by the Gothic warriors, she decided to associate with herself, not in matrimony, for he was already married, but in regal partnership, her cousin Theodahad, the nearest male heir of Theodoric, and to mount the throne together with him. Previously, however, to announcing this scheme in public, she sent for Theodahad and exacted from him 'tremendous oaths[61]' that if he were chosen King he would be satisfied with the mere name of royalty, leaving her as much of the actual substance of power as she possessed at that moment.
[Footnote 61: [Greek: horkois deinotatois].]
[Sidenote: Amalasuentha associates Theodahad in the Sovereignty.]
The partnership-royalty and the oath of self-abnegation were the desperate expedients of a woman who knew herself to have mighty enemies among her subjects, and who felt power slipping from her grasp. With one side of her character her new partner could sympathise; for Theodahad, though sprung from the loins of Gothic warriors, was a man of some literary culture, who preferred poring over the 'Republic' of Plato to heading a charge of the Gothic cavalry. But his acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature had done nothing to ennoble his temper or expand his heart. A cold, hard, avaricious soul, he had been entirely bent on adding field to field and removing his neighbour's landmark, until the vast possessions which he had received from the generosity of Theodoric should embrace the whole of the great Tuscan plain. It will be seen by referring to two letters in the following collection[62] that Theodoric himself had twice employed the pen of Cassiodorus to rebuke the rapacity of his nephew; and at a more recent date, since the beginning of Athalaric's illness, Amalasuentha had been compelled by the complaints of her Tuscan subjects to issue a commission of enquiry, which had found Theodahad guilty of the various acts of land-robbery which had been charged against him, and had compelled him to make restitution.
[Footnote 62: Variarum iv. 39 and v. 12.]
[Sidenote: Amalasuentha is deposed and imprisoned by Theodahad, April 30, 535.]
The new Queen persuaded herself, and tried to persuade her cousin, that this ignominious sentence had in some way put the subject of it straight with the world, and had smoothed his pathway to the throne. She trusted to his gratitude and his tremendous oaths for her own undisturbed position at the helm of the State, but she found before many months of the joint reign had passed that the reed upon which she was leaning was about to pierce her hand. Only four letters, it will be seen, of the following collection were written by order of Amalasuentha after the commencement of the joint reign. Soon Theodahad felt himself strong enough to hurl from the throne the woman who had dared to compel him to draw back the boundary of his Tuscan latifundium. The relations of the three noblemen whom Amalasuentha had put to death gathered gladly round him, eager to work out the blood-feud; and by their help he slew many of the strongest supporters of the Queen, and shut her up in prison in a little lonely island upon the lake of Vulsinii. This event took place on the 30th of April, 535, not quite seven months after the death of Athalaric[63].
[Footnote 63: The dates of the death of Athalaric and deposition of Amalasuentha are given by Agnellus in his Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, p. 322 (in the edition comprised in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica).]
[Sidenote: Embassy of Peter.]
[Sidenote: Death of Amalasuentha.]
During all these later months there had been a perpetual flux and reflux of diplomatic communications between Ravenna and Constantinople. The different stages of the negotiations are marked, apparently with clearness, by Procopius; but it is not always easy to harmonise them with the letters published by Cassiodorus, who either did not write, or shrank from republishing, some of the most important letters to the Emperor. This remark applies to the missive which was probably taken by the Senators Liberius and Opilio, who were now sent by Theodahad to Justinian to apologise for the imprisonment of Amalasuentha, and to promise that she should receive no injury. Meanwhile Peter, a rhetorician and an ex-Consul, was travelling from Constantinople with a commission the character of which was being constantly changed by the rapid current of events. He started with instructions to complete the transaction with Amalasuentha as to the surrender of Italy, and to buy from Theodahad, who was still a private individual, his possessions in Tuscany. Soon after his departure he met the ambassadors, who told him of the death of Athalaric and the accession of Theodahad. On the shores of the Hadriatic he heard of Amalasuentha's captivity. He waited for further instructions from his master, and on his arrival at Ravenna he found that all was over. The letter which he was to have handed to the deposed Queen, assuring her of Justinian's protection, was already obsolete. The kinsmen of the three nobles had been permitted or encouraged by Theodahad to end the blood-feud bloodily. They had repaired to the Lake of Vulsinii and murdered Amalasuentha in her bath[64]. The Byzantine ambassador sought the presence of the King, boldly denounced his wicked deed, and declared on the part of his master a war which would be waged without truce or treaty till Amalasuentha was avenged. Thus began the eighteen years' war between Justinian and the Ostrogoths.
[Footnote 64: We do not seem to have the precise date of the death of Amalasuentha, but apparently it happened about the month of May, 535.]
[Sidenote: Why did Cassiodorus continue in the service of Theodahad?]
It might certainly have been expected that a statesman who had been honoured with the intimate friendship of Theodoric and his daughter, even if unable to avenge her death, would have refused to serve in the Cabinet of her murderer. It is accordingly with a feeling of painful surprise that we find Cassiodorus still holding the Secretary's pen, and writing letter after letter (they form the majority of the documents in the Tenth Book of the 'Variae') in the name of Theodahad and his wife Gudelina. Dangers no doubt were thickening round his beloved Italy. He may have thought that whoever wore the Gothic crown, Duty forbade him to quit the Secretum at Ravenna just when war with the Empire was becoming every day more imminent. On the other hand, the Praetorian Praefecture, the object of a life's ambition, was now his, but had been his only for two years. It was hard to lay aside the purple mandye while the first gloss was yet upon it; hard to have to fall back into the ranks of the ordinary senators, and no longer to receive the reverent salutations of the chiefs of the army when he entered the hall of meeting. Whether the public good or the private advantage swayed him most who shall say? There are times when patriotism calls for the costliest sacrifice which a statesman can make--the sacrifice, apparently, of his own honour. The man who has made such a sacrifice must be content to be misjudged by his fellow-men. Certainly, to us the one stain upon an otherwise pure reputation seems to be found in the service, the apparently willing service, which in the Tenth Book of his letters Cassiodorus renders to Theodahad.
[Sidenote: Vacillation of Theodahad.]
Throughout the latter half of 535, Belisarius in Sicily and Mundus in Dalmatia were warring for Justinian against Theodahad. The rhetorician Peter, who had boldly rebuked the Gothic King for the murder of his benefactress, and had on his master's behalf denounced a truceless war against him, still lingered at his Court. Theodahad, who during part of the summer and autumn of 535 seems to have been at Rome, not at Ravenna, was more than half inclined to resume his old negotiations with the Emperor, and either to purchase peace by sinking into the condition of a tributary, or to sell his kingdom outright for a revenue of £48,000 a year and a high place among the nobles of the Empire. Procopius[65] gives us a vivid and detailed narrative of the manner in which these negotiations were conducted by Theodahad, who was perpetually wavering between arrogance and timidity; trembling at the successes of Belisarius, elated by any victory which his generals might win in Dalmatia; and who at length, upon receiving the tidings of the defeat and death of Mundus, broke off the negotiations altogether, and shut up Peter and his colleague Athanasius in prison.
[Footnote 65: De Bello Gotthico, i. 6.]
[Sidenote: Silence of the 'Variae' as to many of the negotiations between Theodahad and Justinian.]
Here again, while not doubting the truth of the narrative of Procopius, I do not find it possible exactly to fit in the letters written by Cassiodorus for Theodahad with the various stages of the negotiation as described by him. Especially the striking letter of the King to the Emperor--striking by reason of its very abjectness--which is quoted by Procopius in the sixth chapter of his First Book, appears to be entirely unrepresented in the collection of Cassiodorus. Evidently all this part of the 'Variae' has been severely edited by its author, who has expunged all that seemed to reflect too great discredit on the Sovereign whom he had once served, and has preserved only some letters written to Justinian and Theodora by Theodahad and his wife, vaguely praising peace, and beseeching the Imperial pair to restore it to Italy; letters which, as it seems to me, may be applied with about equal fitness to any movement of the busy shuttle of diplomacy backwards and forwards between Ravenna and Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Theodahad deposed, Witigis elected, Aug. 536.]
The onward march of Belisarius trampled all the combinations of diplomatists into the dust. In the early part of July, 536, he had succeeded in capturing the important city of Neapolis, and had begun to threaten Rome. The Gothic warriors, disgusted at the incapacity of their King, and probably suspecting his disloyalty to the nation, met (August, 536) under arms upon the plain of Regeta[66], deposed Theodahad, and elected a veteran named Witigis as his successor. Witigis at once ordered Theodahad to be put to death, and being himself of somewhat obscure lineage, endeavoured to strengthen his title to the crown by marrying Matasuentha, the sister of Athalaric and the only surviving descendant of Theodoric.
[Footnote 66: The situation of this plain is unknown.]
[Sidenote: Letter on the elevation of Witigis.]
Whether Cassiodorus had any hand in this revolution--which was pre-eminently a Gothic movement--we cannot tell; but certainly one of the best specimens of his letters is that written in the name of the new King[67], in which he makes Witigis thus speak, 'Universis Gothis'--not as Theodoric had so often spoken, 'Universis Gothis et Romanis:'
[Footnote 67: Var. x. 31.]
'Unde Auctori nostro Christo gratias humillimâ satisfactione referentes, indicamus parentes nostros Gothos inter procinctuales gladios, more majorum, scuto supposito, regalem nobis contulisse, praestante Deo, dignitatem, ut honorem arma darent, cujus opinionem bella pepererant. Non enim in cubilis angustis, sed in campis latè patentibus electum me esse noveritis: nec inter blandientium delicata colloquia, sed tubis concrepantibus sum quaesitus, ut tali fremitu concitatus desiderio virtutis ingenitae regem sibi Martium Geticus populus inveniret.'
[Sidenote: Letters written in name of Witigis.]
We have only five letters written by Cassiodorus for Witigis (who reigned from August, 536, to May[68], 540). One has been already described. All the other four are concerned with negotiations for peace with Justinian, and may probably be referred to the early part of the new reign.
[Footnote 68: We get this date only from Agnellus (loc. cit. p. 522).]
[Sidenote: Share of Cassiodorus in the administration during the war.]
It will be seen that the letters written by Cassiodorus for the Sovereign during the five years following the death of Athalaric are few and somewhat unsatisfactory. But, on the other hand, it was just during these years that he wrote in his own name as Praetorian Praefect the letters which are comprised in the Eleventh and Twelfth Books of his collection, and which are in some respects the most interesting of the whole series. There is a strong probability that he was not present at the long siege of Rome (March, 537, to March, 538), nor is it likely that he, an elderly civilian, would take much part in any of the warlike operations that followed. Upon the whole, it seems probable that during the greater part of this time Cassiodorus was, to the best of his power, keeping the civil administration together by virtue of his own authority as Praetorian Praefect, without that constant reference to the wishes of the Sovereign which would have been necessary under Theodoric and his daughter. Perhaps, in the transitional state of things which then prevailed in Italy, with the power of the Gothic sceptre broken but the sway of the Roman Caesar not yet firmly established in its stead, men of all parties and both nationalities were willing that as much as possible of the routine of government should be carried on by a statesman who was Roman by birth and culture, but who had been the trusted counsellor of Gothic Kings.
[Sidenote: Dates of later letters.]
I have endeavoured as far as possible to fix the dates of these later letters. It will be seen that we have one[69] probably belonging to the year 536, five[70] to 537, and one[71] (possibly) to 538. These later letters refer chiefly to the terrible famine which followed in the train of the war, and of which Cassiodorus strenuously laboured to mitigate the severity.
[Footnote 69: Var. xii. 20.]
[Footnote 70: Var. xii. 22, 23, 24, 27, 28.]
[Footnote 71: Var. xii. 25.]
[Sidenote: End of Cassiodorus' official career.]
It is possible that the Praefect may have continued to hold office down to the capture of Ravenna in May, 540, which made Witigis a prisoner, and seemed to bring the Ostrogothic monarchy to an end. Upon the whole, however, it is rather more probable that in the year 538 or 539 he finally retired from public life. The dates of his letters will show that there is nothing in them which forbids us to accept this conclusion; and the fact, if it be a fact, that in 540, when Belisarius, with his Secretary Procopius in his train, made his triumphal entry into Ravenna, the late Praefect was no longer there, but in his native Province of Bruttii, a little lessens the difficulty of that which still remains most difficult of comprehension, the entire omission from Procopius' History of the Gothic War of all mention of the name of Cassiodorus.
[Sidenote: The Variae edited.]
The closing years of the veteran statesman's tenure of office were years of some literary activity. It was in them that he was collecting, and to some extent probably revising, the letters which appear in the following collection. His motives for publishing this monument of his official life are sufficiently set forth in the two prefaces, one prefixed to the First Book and the other to the Eleventh. Much emphasis is laid on the entreaties of his friends, the regular excuse, in the sixth century as in the nineteenth, for an author or a politician doing the very thing which most pleases his own vanity. A worthier reason probably existed in the author's natural desire to vindicate his own consistency, by showing that the influence which for more than thirty years he had wielded in the councils of the Gothic Sovereigns had been uniformly exerted on the side of law and order and just government, directed equally to the repression of Teutonic barbarism and the punishment of Roman venality.
[Sidenote: What alterations were made in the letters.]
The question how far the letters which now appear in the 'Variae' really reproduce the actual documents originally issued by Cassiodorus is one which has been a good deal discussed by scholars, but with no very definite result. It is, after all, a matter of conjecture; and every student who peruses the following letters is entitled to form his own conjecture--especially as to those marvellous digressions on matters of Natural History, Moral Philosophy, and the like--whether they were veritably included in the original letters that issued from the Royal Secretum, and were carried over Italy by the Cursus Publicus. My own conjecture is, that though they may have been a little amplified and elaborated, substantially they were to be found in those original documents. The age was pedantic and half-educated, and had lost both its poetic inspiration and its faculty of humour; and I fear that these marvellous letters were read by the officials to whom they were addressed with a kind of stolid admiration, provoking neither the smile of amusement nor the shrug of impatience which are their rightful meed.
[Sidenote: 'Illum atque Illum.']
The reader will observe that in many, in fact most of the letters, which were meant to serve as credentials to ambassadors or commissions to civil servants, no names are inserted, but we have instead only the tantalising formula, 'Illum atque Illum,' which I have generally translated, 'A and B.' This circumstance has also been much commented upon, but without our arriving at any very definite result. All that can be said is, that Cassiodorus must have formed his collection of State-papers either from rough drafts in his own possession, or from copies preserved in the public archives, and that, from whichsoever source he drew, the names in that source had not been preserved: a striking comment on the rhetorical unbusinesslike character of the Royal and Imperial Chanceries of that day, in which words were deemed of more importance than things, and the flowers of speech which were showered upon the performer of some piece of public business were preserved, while the name of the performer was forgotten.
[Sidenote: Treatise 'De Animâ.']
As soon as he had finished the collection of the 'Variae,' the Praefect--again in obedience to the entreaties of his friends--composed a short philosophic treatise on the Nature of the Soul ('De Animâ'). As he said, it seems an absurd thing to treat as a stranger and an unknown quantity the very centre of our being; to seek to understand the height of the air, the extent of the earth, the causes of storms and earthquakes, and the nature of the wandering winds, and yet to leave the faculty, by which we grasp all this knowledge, itself uncomprehended[72]. He therefore sets himself to enquire, in twelve chapters:
[Footnote 72: 'Cum jam suscepti operis optato fine gauderem, meque duodecim voluminibus jactatum quietis portus exciperet, ubi etsi non laudatus, certe liberatus adveneram, amicorum me suave collegium in salum rursus cogitationis expressit, postulans ut aliqua quae tam in libris sacris, quam in saecularibus abstrusa compereram de animae substantiâ, vel de ejus virtutibus aperirem, cui datum est tam ingentium rerum secreta reserare: addens nimis ineptum esse si eam per quam plura cognoscimus, quasi a nobis alienam ignorare patiamur, dum ad anima sit utile nosse qua sapimus' (De Animâ, Praefatio).]
1. Why the Soul is called Anima?
2. What is the definition of the Soul?
3. What is its substantial quality?
4. If it is to be believed to have any shape?
5. What moral virtues it has which contribute to its glory and its adornment?
6. What are its natural virtues [or powers], given to enable it to hold together the framework of the body?
7. Concerning the origin of the Soul.
8. What is its especial seat, since it appears to be in a certain sense diffused over the whole body?
9. Concerning the form and composition of the body itself.
10. Sufficient signs by which we may discern what properties the souls of sinners possess.
11. Similar signs by which we may distinguish the souls of righteous men, since we cannot see them with our bodily eyes.
12. Concerning the Soul's state after death, and how it will be affected by the general resurrection.
The treatise ends with a prayer to Christ to preserve the body in good health, that it may be in tune with the harmony of the soul; to give reason the ascendancy over the flesh; and to keep the mind in happy equipoise, neither so strong as to be puffed up with pride, nor so languid as to fail of its proper powers.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus retires to the cloister.]
The line of thought indicated by the 'De Animâ' led, in such a country as Italy, at such a time as the Gothic War, to one inevitable end--the cloister. It can have surprised none of the friends of Cassiodorus when the veteran statesman announced his intention of spending the remainder of his days in monastic retirement. He was now sixty years of age[73]; his wife, if he had ever married, was probably by this time dead; and we hear nothing of any children for whose sake he need have remained longer in the world. The Emperor would probably have received him gladly into his service, but Cassiodorus had now done with politics. The dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. That dream was now scattered to the winds. Providence had made it plain that not by this bridge was civilisation to pass over from the Old World to the New. Cassiodorus accepted the decision, and consecrated his old age to religious meditation and to a work even more important than any of his political labours (though one which must be lightly touched on here), the preservation by the pens of monastic copyists of the Christian Scriptures, and of the great works of classical antiquity.
[Footnote 73: Fifty-eight, if the retirement was in 538.]
[Sidenote: He founds two monasteries at Scyllacium.]
It was to his ancestral Scyllacium that Cassiodorus retired; and here, between the mountains of Aspromonte and the sea, he founded his monastery, or, more accurately, his two monasteries, one for the austere hermit, and the other for the less aspiring coenobite. The former was situated among the 'sweet recesses of Mons Castellius[74],' the latter among the well-watered gardens which took their name from the Vivaria (fish-ponds) that Cassiodorus had constructed among them in connection with the river Pellena[75]. Baths, too, especially intended for the use of the sick, had been prepared on the banks of the stream[76]. Here in monastic simplicity, but not without comfort, Cassiodorus ordained that his monks should dwell. The Rule of the order--in so far as it had a written Rule--was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the great founder of Western Monachism, who had died about a century before the Vivarian monastery was founded. In commending the writings of Cassian to the study of his monks, Cassiodorus warns them against the bias shown in them towards the Semi-Pelagian heresy, and desires them to choose the good in those treatises and to refuse the evil. Whatever the reason may have been, it seems clear that Cassiodorus did not make the Rule of Benedict the law of his new monastery; and indeed, strange as the omission may appear, there is, I believe, no allusion to that great contemporary Saint, the 'Father of Monks,' in the whole of his writings.
[Footnote 74: 'Nam si vos in monasterio Vivariensi divinâ gratia suffragante coenobiorum consuetudo competenter erudiat, et aliquid sublimius defaecatis animis optare contingat, habetis mentis Castelli secreta suavia, ubi velut anachoritae (praestante Domino) feliciter esse possitis' (De Inst. Div. Litt. xxix.).]
[Footnote 75: 'Invitat vos locus Vivariensis monasterii ... quando habetis hortos irriguos, et piscosi amnis Pellenae fluenta vicina, qui nec magnitudine undarum suspectus habetur, nec exiguitate temnibilis. Influit vobis arte moderatus, ubicunque necessarius judicatur et hortis vestris sufficiens et molendinis.... Maria quoque vobis ita subjacent, ut piscationibus variis pateant; et captus piscis, cum libuerit, vivariis possit includi. Fecimus enim illic (juvante Deo) grata receptacula ubi sub claustro fideli vagetur piscium multitudo; ita consentanea montium speluncis, ut nullatenus se sentiat captum, cui libertas eat escas sumere, et per solitas se cavernas abscondere.']
[Footnote 76: 'Balnea quoque congruenter aegris praeparata corporibus jussimus aedificari, ubi fontium perspicuitas decenter illabitur, quae et potui gratissima cognoscitur et lavacris.']
[Sidenote: Probably never Abbot.]
Though the founder and patron of these two monasteries, it seems probable that Cassiodorus never formally assumed the office of Abbot in either of them[77]. He had probably still some duties to perform as a large landholder in Bruttii; but besides these he had also work to do for 'his monks' (as he affectionately called them)--work of a literary and educational kind--which perhaps made it undesirable that he should be burdened with the petty daily routine of an Abbot's duties. Some years before, he had endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus[78] to found a School of Theology and Christian Literature at Rome, in imitation of the schools of Alexandria and Nisibis[79]. The clash of arms consequent on the invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment of this scheme; but the aged statesman now determined to devote the remainder of his days to the accomplishment of the same purpose in connection with the Vivarian convent.
[Footnote 77: But the words of Trithemius (quoted by Migne, Patrologia lxix. 498), 'Hic post aliquot conversionis suae annos abbas electus est, et monasterio multo tempore utiliter praefuit,' may preserve a genuine and accurate tradition. Cassiodorus' mention of the two Abbots, Chalcedonius and Geruntius (De Inst. Div. Litt. cap. xxxii.) shows that at any rate in the infancy of his monasteries he was not Abbot of either of them.]
[Footnote 78: Agapetus was Pope in 535 and 536.]
[Footnote 79: 'Nisus sum ergo cum beatissimo Agapeto papa urbis Romae, ut sicut apud Alexandriam multo tempore fuisse traditur institutum, nunc etiam in Nisibi civitate Syrorum ab Hebraeis sedulo fertur exponi, collatis expensis in urbe Romana professos doctores scholae potius acciperent Christianae, unde et anima susciperet aeternam salutem, et casto atque purissimo eloquio fidelium lingua comeretur' (De Inst. Praefatio).]
In the earliest days of Monasticism men like the hermits of the Thebaid had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrawing from all human voices to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts while still keeping their main ends in view. St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally St. Benedict, in that Rule of his which was to be the code of monastic Christendom for centuries, had sanctified Work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic, bringing together Laborare and Orare in friendly union, and proclaiming anew for the monk as for the untonsured citizen the primal ordinance, 'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread.'
[Sidenote: The father of literary Monasticism.]
The great merit of Cassiodorus, that which shows his deep insight into the needs of his age and entitles him to the eternal gratitude of Europe, was his determination to utilise the vast leisure of the convent for the preservation of Divine and human learning and for its transmission to after ages. In the miserable circumstances of the times Theology was in danger of becoming brutified and ignorant; the great treasures of Pagan literature were no longer being perpetuated by the slaves who had once acted as librarii to the Greek or Roman noble; and with every movement of the Ostrogothic armies, or of the yet more savage hordes who served under the Imperial standard, with every sacked city and with every ravaged villa, some Codex, it may be such as we should now deem priceless and irreplaceable, was perishing. This being the state of Italy, Cassiodorus resolved to make of his monastery not merely a place for pious meditation, but a theological school and a manufactory for the multiplication of copies, not only of the Scriptures, not only of the Fathers and the commentators on Scripture, but also of the great writers of pagan antiquity. In the chapter[80] which he devotes to the description of the scriptorium of his monastery he describes, with an enthusiasm which must have been contagious, the noble work done there by the antiquarius: 'He may fill his mind with the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord. With his fingers he gives life to men and arms them against the wiles of the devil. So many wounds does Satan receive as the antiquarius copies words of Christ. What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant Provinces. Man multiplies the heavenly words, and by a striking figure--if I may dare so to speak--the three fingers of his hand express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. The fast-travelling reed writes down the holy words, and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Saviour.'
[Footnote 80: The 30th of the De Institutione Div. Litt.]
It is true that the passage here quoted refers only to the work of the copyist of the Christian Scriptures, but it could easily be shown from other passages[81] that the literary activity of the monastery was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature.
[Footnote 81: For instance, in cap. xv., after cautioning his copyists against rash corrections of apparent faults in the sacred MSS., he says: 'Ubicunque paragrammata in disertis hominibus [i.e. in classical authors] reperta fuerint, intrepidus vitiosa recorrigat.' And the greater part of cap. xxviii. is an argument against 'respuere saecularium litterarum studia.']
[Sidenote: Bookbinding.]
[Sidenote: Mechanical appliances for the convent.]
Cassiodorus then goes on to describe the care which he has taken for the binding of the sacred Codices in covers worthy of the beauty of their contents, following the example of the householder in the parable, who provided wedding garments for all who came to the supper of his son. One pattern volume had been prepared, containing samples of various sorts of binding, that the amanuensis might choose that which pleased him best. He had moreover provided, to help the nightly toil of the scriptorium, mechanical lamps of some wonderful construction, which appears to have made them self-trimming, and to have ensured their having always a sufficient supply of oil[82]. Sun-dials also for bright days, and water-clocks for cloudy days and the night-season, regulated their labour, and admonished them when it was time to unclose the three fingers, to lay down the reed, and to assemble with their brethren in the chapel of the convent for psalmody and prayer.
[Footnote 82: Paravimus etiam nocturnis vigiliis mechanicas lucernas, conservatrices illuminantium flammarum, ipsas sibi nutrientes incendium, quae humano ministerio cessante, prolixe custodiant uberrimi luminis abundantissimam claritatem; ubi olei pinguedo non deficit, quamvis flammis ardentibus jugitor torreatur.]
[Sidenote: Relation to the Benedictine Rule.]
Upon the whole, though the idea of using the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training was not absolutely new, Cassiodorus seems certainly entitled to the praise of having first realised it systematically and on an extensive scale. It was entirely in harmony with the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict, if it was not formally ordained in that document. At a very early date in the history of their order, the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Thus, instead of accepting the obsolete formula for which some scholars in the last age contended, 'Cassiodorus was a Benedictine,' we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus as a transcriber of the Scriptures.]
In order to set an example of literary diligence to his monks, and to be able to sympathise with the difficulties of an amanuensis, Cassiodorus himself transcribed the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Epistles[83], no doubt from the translation of Jerome. This is not the place for enlarging on the merits of Cassiodorus as a custodian and transmitter of the sacred text. They were no doubt considerable; and the rules which he gives to his monks, to guide them in the work of transcription, show that he belonged to the Conservative school of critics, and was anxious to guard against hasty emendations of the text, however plausible. Practically, however, his MSS. of the Latin Scriptures, showing the Itala and the Vulgate in parallel columns, seem to have been answerable for some of that confusion between the two versions which to some extent spoiled the text of Jerome, without preserving to us in its purity the interesting translation of the earlier Church.
[Footnote 83: 'In Psalterio et Prophetis et Epistolis apostolorum studium maximum laboris impendi.... Quos ego cunctos novem codices auctoritatis divinae (ut senex potui) sub collatione priscorum codicum amicis ante me legentibus, sedula lectione transivi' (De Inst. Praefatio). We should have expected 'tres' rather than 'novem,' as the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Epistles each formed one codex.]
Besides his labours as a transcriber, Cassiodorus, both as an original author and a compiler, used his pen for the instruction of his fellow-inmates at Vivarium.
[Sidenote: Commentary on the Psalms.]
(1) He began and slowly completed a Commentary on the Psalms. This very diffuse performance (which occupies more than five hundred closely printed pages in Migne's edition) displays, in the opinion of those who have carefully studied it[84], a large amount of acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers, and was probably looked upon as a marvel of the human intellect by the Vivarian monks, for whose benefit it was composed, and to whom it revealed, in the Psalms which they were daily and nightly intoning, refutations of all the heresies that had ever racked the Church, and the rudiments of all the sciences that flourished in the world. It is impossible now for this or any future age to do aught but lament over so much wasted ingenuity, when we find the author maintaining that the whole of the one hundred and fifty Psalms were written by King David, and that Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun have only a mystical meaning; that the first seventy represent the Old Testament, and the last eighty the New, because we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on the eighth day of the week, and so forth. A closer study of the book might perhaps discover in it some genuine additions to the sum of human knowledge; but it is difficult to repress a murmur at the misdirected industry which has preserved to us the whole of this ponderous futility, while it has allowed the History of the Goths to perish.
[Footnote 84: I take my account of this treatise chiefly from Franz (pp. 93-100).]
[Sidenote: Commentary on the Epistles.]
(2) The 'Complexiones in Epistolas Apostolorum' (first published by Maffei in 1721, from a MS. discovered by him at Verona) have at least the merit of being far shorter than the Commentary on the Psalms. Perhaps the only points of interest in them, even for theological scholars, are that Cassiodorus evidently attributes the Epistle to the Hebrews without hesitation to the Apostle Paul, and that he notices the celebrated passage concerning the Three Heavenly Witnesses (1 John v. 7) in a way which seems to imply that he found that passage in the text of the Vulgate, though on examination his language is seen to be consistent with the theory that these words are a gloss added by the commentator himself.
[Sidenote: Historia Tripartita.]
(3) In order to supply the want of any full Church History in the Latin tongue, a want which was probably felt not only by his own monks but throughout the Churches of the West, Cassiodorus induced his friend Epiphanius to translate from the Greek the ecclesiastical histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and then himself fused these three narratives into one, the well-known 'Historia Tripartita,' which contains the story of the Church's fortunes from the accession of Constantine to the thirty-second year of the reign of Theodosius II (306-439). The fact that the numerous mistranslations of Epiphanius have passed uncorrected, probably indicates that Cassiodorus' own knowledge of Greek was but slight, and that he depended on his coadjutor entirely for this part of the work. The 'Historia Tripartita' has probably had a larger circulation than any other of its author's works; but Cassiodorus himself thought so little of his share in it, that he does not include it in the list of his writings prefixed to the treatise 'De Orthographiâ.' And, in fact, the inartistic way in which the three narratives are soldered together, rather than recast into one symmetrical and harmonious whole, obliges us to admit that Cassiodorus' work at this book was little more than mechanical, and entitles him to scarcely any other praise than that of industry.
[Sidenote: Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum.]
(4) Of a different quality, though still partaking somewhat of the nature of a compilation, was his chief educational treatise, the 'Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum[85].' About the year 543, some three or four years after his retirement from public life, while he was slowly ploughing his way through the Commentary on the Psalms, twenty of which he had already interpreted, he seems to have laid it aside for a time in order to devote himself to this work, which aimed more at instruction than at religious edification. In the outset of this book he describes that unsuccessful attempt of his, to which allusion has already been made, for the establishment of a theological school in Rome, and continues that, 'as the rage of war and the turbulence of strife in the Italian realm[86] had prevented the fulfilment of this desire, he felt himself constrained by Divine charity to write for his monks' behoof these libri introductorii, in which, after the manner of a teacher, he would open to them the series of the books of Holy Scripture, and would give them a compendious acquaintance with secular literature.' As the book is not written for the learned, he undertakes to abstain from 'affectata eloquentia,' and he does in the main keep his promise. The simple, straightforward style of the book, which occasionally rises into real and 'unaffected eloquence' where the subject inspires him to make an appeal to the hearts of his readers, presents a striking and favourable contrast to the obscure and turgid phraseology in which the perverted taste of the times caused him generally to shroud his meaning[87].
[Footnote 85: Printed hitherto as two works, De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, and De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum. But, as Ebert has shown (i. 477), the Preface to the Orthographia makes it probable that these two really formed one book, with a title like that given above.]
[Footnote 86: 'In Italico regno.' These words seem to favour the conjecture that Theodoric may have called himself King of Italy.]
[Footnote 87: As a specimen of this better style of Cassiodorus, I may refer to his praises of the life of the literary monk, and his exhortation to him who is of duller brain to practise gardening: 'Quapropter toto nisu, toto labore, totis desideriis exquiramus ut ad tale tantumque munus, Domino largiente, pervenire mereamur. Hoc enim nobis est salutare, proficuum, gloriosum, perpetuum, quod nulla mors, nulla mobilitas, nulla possit separare oblivio; sed in illa suavitate patriae, cum Domino faciet aeterna exsultatione gaudere. Quod si alicui fratrum, ut meminit Virgilius,
"Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,"
ut nec humanis nec divinis litteris perfecte possit erudiri, aliqua tamen scientiae mediocritate suffultus, eligat certe quod sequitur,
"Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes."
Quia nec ipsum est a monachis alienum hortos colere, agros exercere, et pomorum fecunditate gratulari; legitur enim in Psalmo centesimo vigesimo septimo, "Labores manuum tuarum manducabis; beatus es et bene tibi erit."']
In the first part of this treatise (commonly called the 'De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum') Cassiodorus briefly describes the contents of the nine Codices[88] which made up the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, and mentions the names of the chief commentators upon each. After some important cautions as to the preservation of the purity of the sacred text and abstinence from plausible emendations, the author proceeds to enumerate the Christian historians--Eusebius, Orosius, Marcellinus, Prosper, and others[89]; and he then slightly sketches the characters of some of the principal Fathers--Hilary, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. This part of the work contains an interesting allusion to 'Dionysius Monachus, Scytha natione, sed moribus omnino Romanus,' of whom Cassiodorus speaks as a colleague in his literary enterprises. This is the so-called Dionysius Exiguus, who fixed (erroneously, as it now appears) the era of the birth of Christ, and whose system of chronology founded on this event has been accepted by all the nations of Christendom. At the conclusion of this the first part of the treatise we find some general remarks on the nature of the monastic life, and some pictures of Vivarium and its neighbourhood, to which we are indebted for some of the information contained in the preceding pages. The book ends with a prayer, and contains thirty-three chapters, the same number, remarks Cassiodorus (who is addicted to this kind of moralising on numbers) that was reached by the years of the life of Christ on earth.
[Footnote 88: 1. Octateuchus (Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth).
2. Kings (Samuel and Kings, Chronicles).
3. Prophets (Four Major, including Daniel, and Twelve Minor).
4. Psalms.
5. Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus).
6. Hagiographa (Tobias, Esther, Judith, Maccabees, Esdras).
7. Gospels.
8. Epistles of the Apostles (including that to the Hebrews).
9. Acts of the Apostles and Apocalypse.]
[Footnote 89: The remarks on Marcellinus Comes and Prosper are worth transcribing: 'Hunc [Eusebium] subsecutus est suprascriptus Marcellinus Illyricianus, qui adhuc patricii Justiniani fertur egisse cancellos; sed meliore conditione devotus, a tempore Theodosii principis usque ad finem imperii triumphalis Augusti Justiniani opus suum, Domino juvante, perduxit; ut qui ante fuit in obsequio suscepto gratus, postea ipsius imperio copiose amantissimus appareret.' [The allusion to 'finem imperii Justiniani' was probably added in a later revision of the Institutiones.] 'Sanctus quoque Prosper Chronica ab Adam ad Genserici tempora et urbis Romae depraedationem usque perduxit.']
The second part of the treatise, commonly called 'De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum,' contains so much as the author thought that every monk should be acquainted with concerning the four liberal arts--Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Mathematics--the last of which is divided into the four 'disciplines' of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. As illustrating the relative importance of these sciences (as we call them) as apprehended by Cassiodorus, it is curious to observe that while Geometry and Astronomy occupy only about one page, and Arithmetic and Music two pages each, Logic takes up eighteen pages, Grammar two, and Rhetoric six.
[Sidenote: De Orthographiâ.]
(5) Some other works, chiefly of a grammatical kind[90], which have now perished, together with the exegetical treatises already named, occupied the leisure hours of the old age of Cassiodorus. At length, in the ninety-third year of his age, the veteran statesman, nobleman, and judge crowned his life of useful service by writing for his beloved monks his still extant treatise 'De Orthographia[91].' He tells us that the monks suddenly exclaimed, 'What doth it profit us to study either those works which the ancients have composed or those which your Wisdom has caused to be added to the list, if we are altogether ignorant how we ought to write these things, and on the other hand cannot understand and accurately represent in speech the words which we find written?' In other words, 'Give us a treatise on spelling.' The venerable teacher gladly complied with the request, and compiled from twelve grammarians[92] various rules, the observance of which would prevent the student from committing the usual faults in spelling. It is no doubt true[93] that this work is a mere collection of excerpts from other authors, not arranged on any systematic principle. Still, even as such a collection, it does great credit to the industry of a nonagenarian; and it seems to me that there is much in it which a person who was studying the transition of Latin into the Lingua Volgare might peruse with profit. To an epigraphist especially it must be interesting to see what were the mistakes which an imperfectly educated Italian in that age was most likely to commit. The confusion between b and v was evidently a great source of error, and their nice discrimination, to which Cassiodorus devotes four chapters, a very crux of accurate scholarship. We see also from a passage in the 'De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum[94]' that the practice of assimilating the last letter of the prefix in compound words, like i_l_luminatio, i_r_risio, i_m_probus, though it had been introduced, was as yet hardly universal; and similarly that the monks required to be instructed to write qui_c_quam for euphony, instead of qui_d_quam.
[Footnote 90: They were a compilation from the 'Artes' of Donatus, from a book on Etymologies (perhaps also by Donatus), and from a treatise by Sacerdos on Schemata; and a short Table of Contents of the Books of Scripture, prepared in such a form as to be easily committed to memory.]
[Footnote 91: Ad amantissimos orthographos discutiendos anno aetatis meae nonagesimo tertio (Domino adjuvante) perveni.]
[Footnote 92: They were Donatus, Cn. Cornutus, Velius Longus, Curtius Valerianus, Papirianus, Adamantius Martyrius, Eutiches, Caesellius, Lucius Caecilius, and 'Priscianus grammaticus, qui nostro tempore Constantinopoli doctor fuit.' Two names seem to be omitted by Cassiodorus.]
[Footnote 93: As stated by Ebert (p. 481).]
[Footnote 94: Cap. xv.]
[Sidenote: Death of Cassiodorus, 575 (?).]
The treatise 'De Orthographiâ' was the last product, as far as we know, of the industrious brain of Cassiodorus. Two years after its composition the aged statesman and scholar, in the ninety-sixth year of his age, entered into his well-earned rest[95]. The death of Cassiodorus occurred (as I believe) in the year 575, three years before the death of the Emperor Justin II, nephew and successor of Justinian. The period covered by his life had been one of vast changes. Born when the Kingdom of Odovacar was only four years old, he had as a young man seen that Kingdom overthrown by the arms of Theodoric; he had sat by the cradle of the Ostrogothic monarchy, and mourned over its grave; had seen the eunuch Narses supreme vicegerent of the Emperor; had heard the avalanche of the Lombard invasion thunder over Italy, and had outlived even the Lombard invader Alboin. Pope Leo, the tamer of Attila and the hero of Chalcedon, had not been dead twenty years when Cassiodorus was born. Pope Gregory the Great, the converter of England, was within fifteen years of his accession to the Pontificate when Cassiodorus died. The first great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches was begun in his boyhood and ended before he had reached old age. He saw the irretrievable ruin of Rome, such as Augustus and Trajan had known her; the extinction of the Roman Senate; the practical abolition of the Consulate; the close of the schools of philosophy at Athens.
[Footnote 95: In assigning the death of Cassiodorus to the ninety-sixth year of his age I rest upon the authority of Trittheim (as quoted in the earlier part of this chapter), who appears to me to have preserved the chronology which was generally accepted, before the question became entangled by the confusion between Cassiodorus and his father.]
Reverting to the line of thought with which this chapter opened, if one were asked to specify any single life which more than another was in contact both with the Ancient World and the Modern, none could be more suitably named than the life of Cassiodorus.
NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SQUILLACE.
The chief conclusions which Mr. Evans came to after his two days' study of the country about Squillace are these:--
[Sidenote: Position of Scylacium.]
I. The Scylacium or Scolacium of Roman times, the city of Cassiodorus, is not to be looked for at the modern Squillace, but at the place called Roccella in the Italian military map, which Lenormant and Evans know as La Roccelletta del Vescovo di Squillace.
This place, which is about ten kilometres north-east of modern Squillace, is on a little hill immediately overhanging the sea, while Squillace is on a spur of the Apennines three or four miles distant from the sea. Mr. Evans' chief reasons for identifying Roccella with Scylacium are (1) its position, 'hanging like a cluster of grapes on hills not so high as to make the ascent of them a weariness, but high enough to command a delightful prospect over land and sea.' This description by Cassiodorus exactly suits Roccella, but does not suit Squillace, which is at the top of a conical hill, and is reached only by a very toilsome ascent. 'With its gradual southern and eastern slope and its freedom from overlooking heights (different in this respect from Squillace),' says Mr. Evans, 'Roccella was emphatically, as Cassiodorus describes it, "a city of the sun."'
(2) Its ruins. While no remains of a pre-mediaeval time have been discovered at Squillace, there is still standing at Roccella the shell of a splendid basilica, of which Mr. Evans has taken some plans and sketches, but which seems to have strangely escaped the notice of most preceding travellers. The total length of this building is 94 paces, the width of the nave 30, the extreme width of the transept 54. It has three fine apses at the eastern end, and is built in the form of a Latin cross. On either side of the nave was an exterior arcade, which apparently consisted originally of eleven window arches, six of them not being for the transmission of light. 'Altogether,' says Mr. Evans, 'this church, even in its dilapidated state, is one of the finest monuments of the kind anywhere existing. We should have to go to Rome, to Ravenna, or to Thessalonica, to find its parallel; but I doubt whether, even at any of those places, there is to be seen a basilica with such fine exterior arcading. It is a great tribute to the strength of the original fabric that so much should have survived the repeated shocks of earthquake that have desolated Calabria, and scarcely left one stone upon another of her ancient cities.'
After a careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of this basilica, Mr. Evans is disposed to fix its erection somewhere about the time of the Emperor Justinian.
In addition to this fine building there are at Roccella the ruins of two smaller late Roman churches, mausolea, and endless foundations of buildings which must have formed very extensive suburbs.
More important than all, the massive walls of a considerable city can still be traced for nearly a mile in two parallel lines, with the transverse wall which unites them. Certainly all these indications seem to point to the existence at this spot of a great provincial city of the Empire, and to make Mr. Evans' conjecture more probable than that of M. Lenormant, who identified the ruins at Roccella with those of Castra Hannibalis, the seaport of Scylacium. It would seem probable, if Mr. Evans' theory be correct, that the city may have been removed to its present site in the early middle ages, in order to guard it against the incursions of the Saracens.
[Sidenote: The Vivarian Monastery.]
II. As to the situation of the Vivarian Monastery Mr. Evans comes to nearly the same conclusion as M. Lenormant. Both place it on the promontory of Squillace (eastward of Staletti), and, as Mr. Evans observes, 'only such a position can be reconciled, on the one hand, with the presence of an abundant stream and rich Campagna, on the other with the neighbourhood of caves and grottoes on the sea-shore.' But while M. Lenormant places it at a place called Coscia, almost immediately to the north of and under Staletti, Mr. Evans pleads for the site now occupied by the Church of S. Maria del Mare, on the cliff top, very near the sea, and about three kilometres south of Staletti. This church is itself of later date than Cassiodorus, and probably formed part of the work of restoration undertaken by Nicephorus Phocas in the Tenth Century; but there are signs of its having formerly joined on to a monastery, and some of the work about it looks as if materials taken from the Cassiodorian edifice had been used in the work of reconstruction.
[Sidenote: The Fons Arethusae.]
III. The Fountain of Arethusa may possibly, according to Mr. Evans, be identified with the Fontana della Panaghia, a small fountain by the sea-shore at the south end of a little bay under the promontory of S. Gregorio. The so-called Fontana di Cassiodoro, near Coscia, has received its name and its present appearance in modern times, and is much too far from the sea to be the Fountain of Arethusa.
II. THE ANECDOTON HOLDERI
A few pages must be devoted to the MS. bearing the somewhat uncouth title of 'Anecdoton Holderi,' because it is the most recently opened source of information as to the life and works of Cassiodorus, and one which, if genuine, settles some questions which have been long and vigorously debated among scholars.
My information on the subject is derived from a pamphlet of 79 pages by Hermann Usener, printed at Bonn in 1877, and bearing the title 'Anecdoton Holderi: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in Ostgothischer Zeit.' I am indebted to Mr. Bywater, of Exeter College, Oxford, for my introduction to this pamphlet, which, while strikingly confirming some conclusions which I had come to from my own independent study of the 'Variae,' has been of the greatest possible service to me in studying the lives of Cassiodorus and Boethius.
[Sidenote: Description of the MS.]
The 'Anecdoton' (which loses its right to that name by Usener's publication of it) was discovered by Alfred Holder in a MS. known as Codex Augiensis, No. CVL, which came from the Monastery of Reichenau and is now in the Grand-Ducal Library at Carlsruhe. The monks of the fertile island of Reichenau (Augia Dives), in the Lake of Constance, were celebrated in the ninth and tenth centuries for their zeal in the collection and transcription of manuscripts. The well-known Codex Augiensis (an uncial MS. of the Greek text of the New Testament, with the Vulgate version in parallel columns) is referred by palaeographers to the ninth century[96]. The Codex Augiensis with which we are now concerned, and which is a copy of the 'Institutiones Humanarum Rerum' of Cassiodorus, is believed to have been written in the next succeeding century. On the last page of this MS. Holder discovered the fragment--not properly belonging to the 'Institutiones'--to which he has given his name, and which is as follows[97]:--
[Footnote 96: See Scrivener, Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 133-4.]
[Footnote 97: I have adopted the emendations--most of them the corrections of obvious mistakes--which are suggested by Usener.]
[Sidenote: Contents of the Anecdoton Holderi.]
'Excerpta ex libello Cassiodori Senatoris monachi servi Dei, ex-Patricio, ex-Consule Ordinario Quaestore et Magistro Officiorum, quem scripsit ad Rufum Petronium Nicomachum ex-Consule Ordinario Patricium et Magistrum Officiorum. Ordo generis Cassiodororum[98]: qui scriptores exstiterint ex eorum progenie vel ex civibus[99] eruditis.
[Footnote 98: In the original, 'Casiodoru.']
[Footnote 99: In the original, 'ex quibus.']
'Symmachus Patricius et Consul Ordinarius, vir philosophus, qui antiqui Catonis fuit novellus imitator, sed virtutes veterum sanctissima religione transcendit. Dixit sententiam pro allecticiis in Senatu, parentesque suos imitatus historiam quoque Romanam septem libris edidit.
'Boethius dignitatibus summis excelluit. Utraque lingua peritissimus orator fuit. Qui regem Theodorichum in Senatu pro Consulatu filiorum luculenta oratione laudavit. Scripsit librum de Sancta Trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium. Condidit et carmen bucolicum. Sed in opere artis logicae, id est dialecticae, transferendo ac mathematicis disciplinis talis fuit ut antiquos auctores aut aequiperaret aut vinceret.
'Cassiodorus Senator, vir eruditissimus et multis dignitatibus pollens. Juvenis adeo, dum patris Cassiodori Patricii et Praefecti Praetorii Consiliarius fieret et laudes Theodorichi regis Gothorum facundissime recitasset, ab eo Quaestor est factus. Patricius et Consul Ordinarius, postmodum dehinc Magister Officiorum [et praefuisset formulas dictionum, quas in duodecim libris ordinavit et Variarum titulum superposuit] scripsit praecipiente Theodoricho rege historiam Gothicam, originem eorum et loca moresque XII libris annuntians.'
This memorandum, for it is hardly more, is a vestige, and the only vestige now remaining, of a short tract by Cassiodorus on the literary history of his family and kinsmen. The 'Excerpta' have been made by some later hand--perhaps that of a monk in the Vivarian convent. To him undoubtedly we owe the words 'monachi servi Dei' as a description of Cassiodorus; probably also the 'ex-Patricio,' which is perhaps an incorrect designation. 'Vir eruditissimus,' in the last paragraph, is probably due to the same hand, as, with all his willingness to do justice to his own good qualities, Cassiodorus would hardly have spoken thus of himself in a work avowedly proceeding from his own pen. The clause which is placed in brackets [et ... superposuit] is probably also due to the copyist, anxious to supply what he deemed the imperfections of his memorandum. In short, it must be admitted that the fragment cannot consist of the very words of Cassiodorus in however abbreviated a form. Still it contains so much that is valuable, and that could hardly have been invented by any writer of a post-Cassiodorian age, that it is well worthy of the careful and, so to speak, microscopical examination to which it has been subjected by Usener.
[Sidenote: Date of the fragment.]
[Sidenote: Persons to whom addressed.]
The work from which these 'Excerpta' are taken was composed, according to Usener, in the year 522. This is proved by the facts that the receiver of the letter is spoken of as Magister Officiorum, a post which he apparently held from Sept. 1, 521, to Sept. 1, 522; and that the Consulship of the two sons of Boethius, which began on Jan. 1, 522, is also referred to. The name of the person to whom the letter is addressed is given as Rufius Petronius Nicomachus. Usener, however, shows good reason for thinking that his final name, the name by which he was known in the consular lists, is omitted, and that his full designation was Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus, Consul in 504, Magister Officiorum (as above stated) in 521-522, and Patrician. He was probably the same Cethegus whom Procopius mentions[100] as Princeps Senatus, and as withdrawing from Rome to Centumcellae in the year 545 because he was accused of treachery to the Imperial cause[101].
[Footnote 100: De Bello Gotthico iii. 13 (p. 328, ed. Bonn).]
[Footnote 101: If Usener be right (and he has worked up this point with great care), we can trace the following links in the pedigree of Cethegus (see pp. 6 and 11):
Rufius Petronius Placidus, Consul 481. | Rufius Petronius Anicius Probinus, Consul 489. | Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus, Consul 504, correspondent of Cassiodorus.
Probinus and Cethegus are referred to by Ennodius in his letter to Ambrosius and Beatus, otherwise called his Paraenesis (p. 409, ed. Hartel).]
[Sidenote: Its object.]
The object of the little treatise referred to evidently was to give an account of those members of the family to which Cassiodorus belonged who had distinguished themselves in literature. The words 'Ex genere Cassiodororum' are perhaps a gloss of the transcribers. At least it does not appear that they would correctly describe the descent of Symmachus and Boethius, though they were relations of Cassiodorus, being descended from or allied to the great house of the Aurelii from which he also sprang. Probably several other names may have been noticed in the original treatise, but the only three as to which the 'Anecdoton' informs us are the three as to whom information is most acceptable--Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus himself.
[Sidenote: Information as to life of Symmachus.]
I. The name of Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus was already known to us as that of the friend, guardian, and father-in-law of Boethius, and his fellow-sufferer from the outburst of suspicious rage which disgraced the last years of Theodoric. That he was Consul in 485 (under the dominion of Odovacar), and that he had at the time of his fall attained the honoured position of Father of the Senate[102], we also know from the 'Consular Fasti' and the 'Anonymus Valesii.' This extract tells us that he had attained the rank of Patricius, which may perhaps have been bestowed upon him when he laid down the Consulship. He was 'a philosopher, and a modern imitator of the ancient Cato; but surpassed the virtues of the men of old by [his devotion to] our most holy religion.' This sentence quite accords with all that we hear of the character of Symmachus from our other authorities--the 'Anonymus Valesii,' Procopius, and Boethius. The blending of old Roman gravity and Christian piety in such a man's disposition is happily indicated in the words before us. It would be an interesting commentary upon them if we were to contrast the career of the Christian Symmachus, who suffered in some sense as a martyr for the Nicene Creed under Theodoric, with that of his ancestor the Pagan Symmachus, who, 143 years before, incurred the anger of Gratian by his protests against the removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate House, and the curtailment of the grant to the Vestal Virgins.
[Footnote 102: Caput Senati. This, not Caput Senatus, is the form which we find in Anon. Valesii. Usener suggests (p. 32) that Symmachus probably became Caput Senati on the death of Festus, who had held that position from 501 to 506.]
The Symmachus with whom we are now concerned was also an orator; and we learn from this extract that he delivered a speech, evidently of some importance, in the Senate, 'pro allecticiis.' There seems much probability in Usener's contention that these 'allecticii' were men who had been 'allecti,' or admitted by co-optation into the Senate during the reign of Odovacar, and whom, on the downfall of that ruler, it had been proposed to strip of their recently acquired dignity--a proposal which seems to have been successfully resisted by Symmachus and his friends.
Lastly, we learn that Symmachus, 'in imitation of his ancestors,' put forth a Roman History in seven books. The expression for ancestors (parentes) here used is thought by Usener to refer chiefly to Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (Consul in 394[103]), whose granddaughter married Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus, and was the grandmother of our Symmachus. This Flavianus, who was in his time one of the chief leaders of the heathen party in the Senate, is spoken of in one inscription as 'historicus disertissimus;' and in another, mention is made of the fact that he dedicated his annals to Theodosius.
[Footnote 103: See Usener, p. 29. The Consules Ordinarii for that year were Arcadius and Honorius.]
Whether the elder Symmachus, the Pagan champion, was a historian as well as an orator is a matter about which there is a good deal of doubt. Jordanes twice quotes 'The History of Symmachus,' once as to the elevation of the Emperor Maximin, and once as to his death[104]. Usener thinks that the 'Anecdoton Holderi' authorises us henceforward to assign these quotations without doubt to the younger, Christian Symmachus, not to his Pagan ancestor. To me the allusion to parentes (in the plural), whose industry as historians the Symmachus there spoken of imitated, seems to make it at least as probable that the earlier, not the later member of the family composed the history which is here quoted by Jordanes.
[Footnote 104: Jordanes, Getica xv.: 'Nam, ut dicit Symmachus in quinto suae historiae libro, Maximinus ... ab exercitus effectus est imperator.' 'Occisus Aquileia a Puppione regnum reliquit Philippo; quod nos huic nostro opusculo de Symmachi hystoria [sic] mutuavimus.']
[Sidenote: Information as to life of Boethius.]
II. We now pass on to consider the information furnished by this fragment as to the illustrious son-in-law of Symmachus, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. Of the facts of his life we had already pretty full information, from the autobiographical sections of the 'Consolation of Philosophy' and other sources. He does not indeed mention the exact year of his birth, but the allusion to 'untimely gray hairs' which he makes in that work, written in 523 or 524, together with other indications[105] as to his age, entitle us to fix it at about 480, certainly not earlier than that year. The death of his father (who was Consul in 487) occurred while he was still a child. Symmachus, as has been already said, was the guardian of his youth and the friend of his manhood, and gave him his daughter Rusticiana to wife. That he received the honour of the Consulship in 510 we know from the 'Fasti Consulares;' but it is perplexing to find him even before that year spoken of[106] as Patricius, since this honour was generally bestowed only on those who had already sat in the curule chair of the Consul[107]. The high consideration in which he was held at the Court of Theodoric, and the value placed upon his scientific attainments, are sufficiently proved by the letters in the following collection, especially by those in which he is consulted about the frauds committed by the officers of the Mint, about the water-clock which is to be sent to Gundobad King of the Burgundians, and the harper who is to be provided for the King of the Franks[108]. In the year 522 his two sons, Symmachus and Boethius, though they had but just attained to man's estate, received the honour of the Consulship, upon which occasion the proud and happy father pronounced a panegyric upon Theodoric before the assembled Senate. Some of these facts in the life of Boethius are referred to in the extract before us, which, as was before said, appears to be taken from a treatise composed in this same year 522, the year of the Consulship of the young Boethii. Of their father's investiture with the office of Magister Officiorum on September 1, 522, of his sudden fall from the royal favour, of the charge of treason which was preferred against him before the end of that year, of his imprisonment during 523 and execution (probably in the early part of 524), we have of course no trace in this extract; and the fact that we have none is a strong argument for the genuineness and contemporary character of the treatise from which it is taken.
[Footnote 105: Chiefly derived from the Paraenesis of Ennodius (Opusc. vi.).]
[Footnote 106: In the Paraenesis.]
[Footnote 107: Usener's suggestion (pp. 38, 39) that he obtained this honour in consequence of having filled the place of Comes Sacrarum Largitionum seems to me only to land us in the further difficulty caused by the entire omission of all allusion to this fact both in the Paraenesis and in the Anecdoton Holderi.]
[Footnote 108: See Var. i. 10 and 45; ii. 40.]
[Sidenote: His theological treatises.]
So far, then, we have in the 'Anecdoton Holderi' only a somewhat meagre reiteration of facts already known to us. But when we come to the statement of the literary labours of Boethius the case is entirely altered. It is well known that in the Middle Ages certain treatises on disputed points of Christian theology were attributed to him as their author. They are:--
1. A treatise 'De Sancta Trinitate.'
2. 'Ad Johannem Diaconum: Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de Divinitate substantialiter praedicentur.'
3. 'Ad eundem: Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint cum non sint substantialia bona.'
4. 'De Fide Catholica.'
5. 'Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.'
It may be said at once that in the earlier MSS. the fourth treatise is not attributed to Boethius. It seems to have been included with the others by some mistake, and I shall therefore in the following remarks assume that it is not his, and shall confine my attention to the first three and the fifth.
[Sidenote: Difficulty as to religious position of Boethius.]
Even as to these, notwithstanding the nearly unanimous voice of the early Middle Ages (as represented by MSS. of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries) assigning them to Boethius as their author, scholars, especially recent scholars, have felt the gravest possible doubts of their being really his, doubts which have of late ripened into an almost complete certainty that he was not their author. The difficulty does not arise from anything in the diction or in the theology which points to a later age as the time of their composition, but from the startling contrast which they present to the religious atmosphere of the 'Consolation of Philosophy.' Here, in these theological treatises, we have the author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him--a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity--the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of a Theist only; and from beginning to end, except one or two sentences in which an obscure allusion may possibly be detected to the Christian revelation, there is nothing which might not have been written by a Greek philosopher ignorant of the very name of Christianity. Of the various attempts which have been made to solve this riddle perhaps the most ingenious is that of M. Charles Jourdain, who, in a monograph devoted to the subject[109], seeks to prove that the author of the theological treatises referred to was a certain Boethus, an African Bishop of the Byzacene Province, who was banished to Sardinia about the year 504 by the Vandal King Thrasamond.
[Footnote 109: De l'Origine des Traditions sur le Christianisme de Boèce (Paris, 1861.)]
Not thus, however, as it now appears, is the knot to be cut. And after all, M. Jourdain, in arguing, as he seems disposed to argue, against any external profession of Christianity on the part of Boethius, introduces contradictions greater than any that his theory would remove. To any person acquainted with the thoughts and words of the little coterie of Roman nobles to which Boethius belonged, it will seem absolutely impossible that the son-in-law of Symmachus, the receiver of the praises of Ennodius and Cassiodorus, should have been a professed votary of the old Paganism. It is not the theological treatises coming from a man in his position which are hard to account for; it is the apparently non-Christian tone of the 'Consolation.'
The fragment now before us shows that the old-fashioned belief in Boethius as a theologian was well founded. 'He wrote a book concerning the Holy Trinity, and certain dogmatic chapters, and a book against Nestorius.' That is a sufficiently accurate resumé of the four theological treatises enumerated above. Here Usener also observes--and I am inclined to agree with him--that there is a certain resemblance between the style of thought of these treatises and that of the 'Consolation' itself. They are, after all, philosophical rather than religious; one of the earliest samples of that kind of logical discussion of theological dogmas which the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages so delighted to indulge in. The young philosopher, hearing at his father-in-law's table the discussions between Chalcedonian and Monophysite with which all Rome resounded, on account of the prolonged strife with the Church of Constantinople, set himself down to discuss the same topics which they were wrangling over by the light--to him so clear and precious--of the Greek philosophy. There was perhaps in this employment neither reverence nor irreverence. He had not St. Augustine's intense and almost passionate conviction of the truth of Christianity; but he was quite willing to accept it and to discourse upon it, as he discoursed on Arithmetic, Music, and Geometry.
But when premature old age, solitude, and the loss of liberty befell him, it was not to the highly elaborated Christian theology of the Sixth Century that he turned for support and consolation. Probably enough the very fact that he knew some of the pitfalls in the way deterred him from that dangerous journey, where the slightest deviation on either side landed him in some detested heresy, the heresy of Nestorius or of Eutyches. 'On revient toujours à ses premiers amours;' and even so Boethius, though undoubtedly professing himself a Christian, and about to die in full communion with the Catholic Church, turned for comfort in his dungeon to the philosophical studies of his youth, especially to the ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle.
After all, the title of the treatise is 'Philosophiae Consolatio;' and however vigorous a literature of philosophy may in the course of centuries have grown up in the Christian domain, in the sixth century the remembrance of the old opposition between Christianity and Philosophy was perhaps still too strong for a writer to do anything more than stand neutral as to the distinctive claims of Christianity, when he had for the time donned the cloak of the philosopher.
[Sidenote: The Bucolic Poem of Boethius.]
We learn from the fragment before us that Boethius also wrote a 'Bucolic Poem.' This is an interesting fact, and helps to explain the facility with which he breaks into song in the midst of the 'Consolation.' It may have been to this effort of the imagination that he alluded when he said at the beginning of that work--
'Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi Flebilis, heu, moestos cogor inire modos.'
We would gladly know something more of this 'Bucolic Poem' indited by the universal genius, Boethius.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus.]
III. As for Cassiodorus himself, the additional information furnished by this fragment has been already discussed in the foregoing chapter. That he was Consilarius to his father during his Praefecture, and that in that capacity he recited an eloquent panegyric on Theodoric, which was rewarded by his promotion to the high office of the Quaestorship, are facts which we learn from this fragment only; and they are of high importance, not only for the life of Cassiodorus but for the history of Europe at the beginning of the Sixth Century, because they make it impossible to assign to any letter in the 'Variae' an earlier date than 500.
III. THE GRADATIONS OF OFFICIAL RANK IN THE LATER EMPIRE
[Sidenote: Official Hierarchy introduced by Diocletian.]
It is well known that Diocletian introduced and Constantine perfected an elaborate system of administration under which the titles, functions, order of precedence, and number of attendants of the various officers of the Civil Service as well as of the Imperial army were minutely and punctiliously regulated. This system, which, as forming the pattern upon which the nobility of mediaeval Europe was to a great extent modelled, perhaps deserves even more careful study than it has yet received, is admirably illustrated by the letters of Cassiodorus. The Notitia Utriusque Imperii, our copies of which must have been compiled in the early years of the Fifth Century, furnishes us with a picture of official life which, after we have made allowance for the fact that the Empire of the West has shrunk into the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy (with the addition of Dalmatia and some other portions of Illyricum), is almost precisely reproduced in the pages of the 'Various Letters.' In order that the student may understand the full significance of many passages in those letters, and especially of the superscriptions by which each letter is prefaced, it will be well to give a brief outline of the system which existed alike under Theodosius and Theodoric.
[Sidenote: Nobilissimi.]
In the first place, then, we come to what is rather a family than a class, the persons bearing the title Nobilissimus[110]. These were the nearest relatives of the reigning Emperor; his brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. The title therefore is not unlike that of Royal or Imperial Highness in modern monarchies. I am not sure whether any trace can be found of the survival of this title in the Ostrogothic Court. Theodahad, nephew of Theodoric, is addressed simply as 'Vir Senator[111],' and he is spoken of as 'praecelsus et amplissimus vir[112].' It is not so, however, in respect of the three great official classes which follow--the Illustres, Spectabiles, and Clarissimi--whose titles were rendered as punctiliously in the Italy of Theodoric as ever they were in the Italy of Diocletian and Constantine.
[Footnote 110: The existence of this title is proved not only by the language of Arcadius in the Theodosian Code x. 25. 1, concerning 'Nobilissimae puellae, filiae meae,' but also by Zosimus (ii. 39), who says that Constantine bestowed the dignity of Nobilissimus on his brother Constantius and his nephew Hannibalianus ([Greek: tês tou legomenou nôbelissimou par' autou Kônstantinou tuchontes axias aidoi tês syngeneias]); and by Marcellinus Comes, s. a. 527, who says: 'Justinus Imperator Justinianum ex sorore suâ nepotem, jamdudum a se Nobilissimum designatum, participem quoque regni ani, successoremque creavit.' It is evident that the title did not come by right of birth, but that some sort of declaration of it was necessary.]
[Footnote 111: Var. iii. 15.]
[Footnote 112: Var. viii. 23.]
[Sidenote: Illustres.]
I. The Illustres were a small and select circle of men, the chief depositaries of power after the Sovereign, and they may with some truth be compared to the Cabinet Ministers of our own political system. The 'Notitia' mentions thirteen of them as bearing rule in the Western Empire. They are:
1. The Praetorian Praefect of Italy.
2. The Praetorian Praefect of the Gauls.
3. The Praefect of the City of Rome.
4. The Master of the Foot Guards (Magister Peditum in Praesenti).
5. The Master of the Horse Guards (Magister Equitum in Praesenti).
6. The Master of the Horse for the Gauls (per Gallias).
7. The Grand Chamberlain (Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi).
8. The Master of the Offices.
9. The Quaestor.
10. The Count of Sacred Largesses.
11. The Count of the Private Domains (Comes Rerum Privatarum).
12. The Count of the Household Cavalry (Comes Domesticorum Equitum).
13. The Count of the Household Infantry (Comes Domesticorum Peditum).
Substantially these same titles were borne by the Illustres to whom Cassiodorus (himself one of them) addressed his 'Various Letters.' The second and the sixth (the Praetorian Praefect of the Gauls, and the Master of the Horse for the Gauls) may possibly have disappeared; and yet, in view of the fact that Theodoric was during the greater part of his reign ruler of a portion of Gaul, it is not necessary to assume even this change. Into the question of the military officers I will not enter, as I confess that I do not understand the relations (whether co-ordinate or subordinated one to another) of the two pairs of officers, Nos. 4 and 5 and Nos. 12 and 13.
The rank and duties of the Praetorian Praefect of Italy, the Master of the Offices, and the Quaestor have already been described in the first chapter. It will be well to say a few words as to the four remaining civil dignitaries, the Praefect of the City, the Grand Chamberlain, the Count of Sacred Largesses, and the Count of the Private Domains.
[Sidenote: Praefect of the City.]
(a) The Praefectus Urbis Romae was by virtue of his office head of the Senate. He had the care of the Annona or corn-largesses to the people, the command of the City-watch, and the duty of keeping the aqueducts in proper repair. The shores and channel of the Tiber, the vast cloacae which carried off the refuse of the City, the quays and warehouses of Portus at the river's mouth were also under his authority. The officer who was charged with taking the census, the officers charged with levying the duties on wine, the masters of the markets, the superintendents of the granaries, the curators of the statues, baths, theatres, and the other public buildings with which the City was adorned, all owned the supreme control of the Urban Praefect. At the beginning of the Fifth Century the Vicarius Urbis (whom it is difficult not to think of as in some sort subject to the Praefectus Urbis), had jurisdiction over all central and southern Italy and Sicily. But if this was the arrangement then, it must have been altered before the time of Cassiodorus, who certainly appears as Praetorian Praefect to have wielded authority over the greater part of Italy. He states, however[113], that the Urban Praefect had, by an ancient law, jurisdiction, not only over Rome itself, but over all the district within 100 miles of the capital.
[Footnote 113: Var. vi. 4.]
[Sidenote: Grand Chamberlain.]
(b) The Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi had under his orders the large staff of Grooms of the Bedchamber, at whose head stood the Primicerius Cubiculariorum, an officer of 'respectable' rank. The Castrensis, Butler or Seneschal, with his army of lacqueys and pages who attended to the spreading and serving of the royal table; the Comes Sacrae Vestis, who with similar assistance took charge of the royal wardrobe; the Comes Domorum, who perhaps superintended the needful repairs of the royal palace, all took their orders in the last resort from the Grand Chamberlain. So, too, did the three Decurions, officers with a splendid career of advancement before them, who marshalled the thirty brilliantly armed Silentiarii, that paced backwards and forwards before the purple veil guarding the slumbers of the Sovereign.
[Sidenote: Count of Sacred Largesses.]
(c) The Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, theoretically only the Grand Almoner of the Sovereign, discharged in practice many of the duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The mines, the mint, the Imperial linen factories, the receipt of the tribute of the Provinces, and many other departments of the public revenue were originally under the care of this functionary, whose office however, as we are expressly told by Cassiodorus, had lost part of its lustre, probably by a transfer of some of these duties to the Count of the Private Domains.
[Sidenote: Count of Private Domains.]
(d) This Minister, the Comes Rerum Privatarum, had the superintendence of the Imperial estates in Italy and the Provinces. Confiscations and the absorption by the State of the properties of defaulting tax-payers were probably always tending to increase the extent of these estates, and to make the office of Count of the Domain more important. The collection of the land-tax, far the most important item of the Imperial revenue, was also made subject to his authority. Finally, in order, as Cassiodorus quaintly observes[114], that his jurisdiction should not be exercised only over slaves (the cultivators of the State domains), some authority was given to him within the City, and by a curious division of labour all charges of incestuous crime, or of the spoliation of graves, were brought before the tribunal of the Comes Privatarum.
[Footnote 114: Var. vi. 8.]
Besides the thirteen persons who, as acting Ministers of the highest class, were entitled to the designation of Illustris, there were also those whom we may call honorary members of the class: the persons who had received the dignity of the Patriciate--a dignity which was frequently bestowed on those who had filled the office of Consul, and which, unlike the others of which we have been speaking, was held for life.
It is a question on which I think we need further information, whether a person who had once filled an Illustrious office lost the right to be so addressed on vacating it. I am not sure that we have any clear case in the following collection of an ex-official holding this courtesy-rank; but it seems probable that such would be the case.
Considering also the great show of honour with which the Consulate, though now destitute of all real power, was still greeted, it seems probable that the Consuls for the year would rank as Illustres; but here, too, we seem to require fuller details.
[Sidenote: Spectabiles.]
II. We now come to the Second Class, the Spectabiles, which consists chiefly of the lieutenants and deputies of the Illustres.
For instance, every Praetorian Praefect had immediately under him a certain number of Vicarii, each of whom was a Spectabilis. The Praefecture included an extent of territory equivalent to two or three countries of Modern Europe (for instance, the Praefecture of the Gauls embraced Britain, Gaul, a considerable slice of Germany, Spain, and Morocco). This was divided into Dioceses (in the instance above referred to Britain formed one Diocese, Gaul another, and Spain with its attendant portion of Africa a third), and the Diocese was again divided into Provinces. The title of the ruler of the Diocese, who in his restricted but still ample domain wielded a similar authority to that of the Illustrious Praefect, was Spectabilis Vicarius.
But the Praefect and the Vicar controlled only the civil government of the territories over which they respectively bore sway. The military command of the Diocese was vested in a Spectabilis Comes, who was under the orders of the Illustrious Magister Militum. Subordinate in some way to the Comes was the Dux, who was also a Spectabilis, but whose precise relation to his superior the Comes is, to me at least, not yet clear[115].
[Footnote 115: I think the usual account of the matter is that which I have given elsewhere (Italy and her Invaders, i. 227), that the Comes had military command in the Diocese and the Dux in the Province. But on closer examination I cannot find that the Notitia altogether bears out this view. It gives us for the Western Empire eight Comites and twelve Duces. The former pretty nearly correspond to the Dioceses, but the latter are far too few for the Provinces, which number forty-two, excluding all the Provinces of Italy. Besides, in some cases the jurisdiction appears to be the same. Thus we have both a Dux and a Comes Britanniarum, and the Dux Mauritaniae Caesariensis must, one would think, have held command in a region as large or larger than the Comes Tingitaniae. Again, we have a Comes Argentoratensis and a Dux Moguntiacensis, two officers whose power, one would think, was pretty nearly equal. The same may perhaps be said of the Comes Litoris Saxonici in Britain and the Dux Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani in Gaul. While recognising a general inferiority of the Dux to the Comes, I do not think we can, with the Notitia before us, assert that the Provincial Duces were regularly subordinated to the Diocesan Comes, as the Provincial Consulares were to the Diocesan Vicarius. And the fact that both Comes and Dux were addressed as Spectabilis rather confirms this view.]
Besides these three classes of dignitaries, the Castrensis, who was a kind of head steward in the Imperial household, and most of the Heads of Departments in the great administrative offices, such as the Primicerius Notariorum and the Magistri Scriniorum[116], bore the title of Spectabilis. We have perhaps hardly sufficient data for an exact calculation, but I conjecture that there would be as many as fifty or sixty Spectabiles in the Kingdom of Theodoric.
[Footnote 116: Probably, from the order in which they are mentioned by the Notitia.]
It appears to me that the epithet Sublimis (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is used as synonymous with Spectabilis[117].
[Footnote 117: Sublimis occurs in the superscription of the following letters: i. 2; iv. 17; v. 25, 30, and 36; ix. 11 and 14; xii. 5.]
[Sidenote: Clarissimi.]
III. The Clarissimi were the third rank in the official hierarchy. To our minds it may appear strange that the 'most renowned' should come below 'the respectable,' but such was the Imperial pleasure. The title 'Clarissimus' had moreover its own value, for from the time of Constantine onwards it was conferred on all the members of the Senate, and was in fact identical with Senator[118]; and this was doubtless, as Usener points out[119], the reason why the letters Cl. were still appended to a Roman nobleman's name after he had risen higher in the official scale and was entitled to be called Spectabilis or Illustris. The Consulares or Correctores, who administered the Provinces under the Vicarii, were called Clarissimi; and we shall observe in the collection before us many other cases in which the title is given to men in high, but not the highest, positions in the Civil Service of the State.
[Footnote 118: See Emil Kühn's Verfassung des Römischen Reichs i. 182, and the passages quoted there.]
[Footnote 119: p. 31.]
Besides the three classes above enumerated there were also:--
[Sidenote: Perfectissimi.]
IV. The Perfectissimi, to which some of the smaller provincial governors belonged, as well as some of the clerks in the Revenue Offices (Numerarii) who had seen long service, and even some veteran Decurions.
Below these again were:--
[Sidenote: Egregii.]
V. The Egregii, who were also Decurions who had earned a right to promotion, or even what we should call veteran non-commissioned officers in the army (Primipilares).
But of these two classes slight mention is made in the Theodosian Code, and none at all (I believe) in the 'Notitia' or the 'Letters of Cassiodorus.'