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.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER 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.]