Let us follow the fortunes of Italy and of Rome. They are not only a
type of the fortunes of the whole western world, but the fortunes of that
world, as you will see, depend on Rome.
You must recollect, meanwhile, that by the middle of the fifth century,
the Western Empire had ceased to exist. The Angles and Saxons were
fighting their way into Britain. The Franks were settled in north France
and the lower Rhineland. South of them, the centre of Gaul still
remained Roman, governed by Counts of cities, who were all but
independent sovereigns, while they confessed a nominal allegiance to the
Emperor of Constantinople. Their power was destined soon to be
annihilated by the conquests of Clovis and his Franks--as false and cruel
ruffians as their sainted king, the first-born son of the Church. The
history of Gaul for some centuries becomes henceforth a tissue of
internecine horrors, which you must read for yourselves in the pages of
M. Sismondi, or of Gregory of Tours. The Allemanni (whose name has
become among the Franks the general name for Germans) held the lands from
the Maine to the Rhaetian Alps. The Burgunds, the lands to the south-
west of them, comprising the greater part of south-east Gaul. The West
Goths held the south-west of Gaul, and the greater part of Spain, having
thrust the Sueves, and with them some Alans, into Gallicia, Asturias, and
Portugal; and thrust, also, the Vandals across the straits of Gibraltar,
to found a prosperous kingdom along the northern shore of Africa. The
East Goths, meanwhile, after various wanderings to the north of the Alps,
lay in the present Austria and in the Danube lands, resting after their
great struggle with the Huns, and their crowning victory of Netad.
To follow the fortunes of Italy, we must follow those of these East
Goths, and especially of one man among them, Theodoric, known in German
song as Dietrich of Bern or Verona.
Interesting exceedingly to us should this great hero be. No man's
history better shows the strange relations between the Teutons and the
dying Empire: but more; his life is the first instance of a Teuton
attempting to found a civilized and ordered state, upon experience drawn
from Roman sources; of the young world trying to build itself up some
sort of dwelling out of the ruins of the old. Dietrich failed, it is
true. But if the thing had been then possible, he seems to have been the
man to have done it. He lived and laboured like what he was--a royal
Amal, a true son of Woden. Unable to write, he founded a great kingdom
by native virtue and common sense. Called a barbarian, he restored
prosperity to ruined Italy, and gave to it (and with it to the greater
part of the western world), peace for three and thirty years. Brought up
among hostile sects, he laid down that golden law of religious liberty
which the nineteenth century has not yet courage and humanity enough to
accept. But if his life was heroic, his death was tragic. He failed
after all in his vast endeavours, from causes hidden from him, but
visible, and most instructive, to us; and after having toiled impartially
for the good of conquerors and of conquered alike, he died sadly, leaving
behind him a people who, most of them, believed gladly the news that a
holy hermit had seen his soul hurled down the crater of Stromboli, as a
just punishment for the inexpiable crime of being wiser than his
generation.
Some have complained of Gibbon's 'hero-worship' of Dietrich--I do not.
The honest and accurate cynic so very seldom worshipped a hero, or
believed in the existence of any, that we may take his good opinion as
almost final and without appeal. One author, for whose opinion I have
already exprest a very high respect, says that he was but a wild man of
the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with Roman civilization;
'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian underneath {101}.' It may be
true. If it be true, it is a very high compliment. It was not from his
Roman civilization, but from his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he
drew the 'vive intelligence des choses morales, et ces inspirations
elevees et heroiques,' which M. Thierry truly attributes to him. If
there was, as M. Thierry truly says, another nature struggling within
him--is there not such in every man? And are not the struggles the more
painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too often
the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good, more
huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of the soul?
The doctrine may seem dangerous. It is dangerous, like many truths; and
woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable, wrest it to their own
destruction; and presume upon it to indulge their own passions under
Byronic excuses of 'genius,' or 'muscular Christianity.' But it is true
nevertheless: so at least the Bible tells us, in its wonderful
delineations of David, 'the man after God's own heart,' and of St. Peter,
the chief of the apostles. And there are points of likeness between the
character of Dietrich, and that of David, which will surely suggest
themselves to any acute student of human nature. M. Thierry attributes
to him, as his worse self, 'les instincts les plus violents; la cruaute,
l'astuce, l'egoisme impitoyable.' The two first counts are undeniable--at
least during his youth: they were the common vices of the age. The two
latter I must hold as not proven by facts: but were they proven, they
would still be excusable, on the simple ground of his Greek education.
'Cunning and pitiless egotism' were the only moral qualities which
Dietrich is likely to have seen exercised at the court of Constantinople:
and what wonder, if he was somewhat demoralized by the abominable
atmosphere which he breathed from childhood? Dietrich is an illustration
of the saga with which these lectures began. He is the very type of the
forest child, bewitched by the fine things of the wicked Troll garden.
The key to the man's character, indeed the very glory of it, is the long
struggle within him, between the Teutonic and the Greek elements. Dazzled
and debauched, at times, by the sinful glories of the Bosphorus, its
palaces, its gold, and its women, he will break the spell desperately. He
will become a wild Goth and an honest man once more; he will revenge his
own degradation on that court and empire which he knows well enough to
despise, distrust and hate. Again and again the spell comes over him.
His vanity and his passions make him once more a courtier among the
Greeks; but the blood of Odin is strong within him still; again and again
he rises, with a noble shame, to virtue and patriotism, trampling under
foot selfish luxury and glory, till the victory is complete; and he turns
away in the very moment of the greatest temptation, from the bewitching
city, to wander, fight, starve, and at last conquer a new land for
himself and for his nation; and shew, by thirty years of justice and
wisdom, what that true Dietrich was, which had been so long overlaid by
the false Dietrich of his sinful youth.
Look at the facts of his history, as they stand, and see whether they do
not bear out this, and no other, theory of his character.
The year was 455, two years after Attila's death. Near Vienna a boy was
born, of Theodemir one of the Gothic kings and his favourite Erleva. He
was sent when eight years old to Constantinople as a hostage. The
Emperor Leo had agreed to pay the Goths 300 pounds of gold every year, if
they would but leave him in peace; and young Dietrich was the pledge of
the compact. There he grew up amid all the wisdom of the Romans,
watching it all, and yet never even learning to write. It seems to some
that the German did not care to learn; it seems to me rather that they
did not care to teach. He came back to his people at eighteen, delighted
them by his strength and stature, and became, to all appearance, a Goth
of the Goths; going adventures with six thousand volunteers against the
Sarmatae, who had just defeated the Greeks, and taken a city--which he
retook, but instead of restoring it to the Emperor, kept himself. Food
becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy, some
down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully presented them
with the country of which they had already taken possession.
In every case, you see, this method went on. The failing Emperors bought
off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they could not;
and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance. The relations
between the two parties can be hardly better explained, than by comparing
them to those between the English adventurers in Hindostan and the
falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.
After a while Theodoric, or Dietrich, found himself, at his father's
death, sole king of the Ostrogoths. This period of his life is very
obscure: but one hint at least we have, which may explain his whole
future career. Side by side with him and with his father before him,
there was another Dietrich--Dietrich the One-eyed, son of Triar, a low-
born adventurer, who had got together the remnants of some low-caste
tribes, who were called the Goths of Thrace, and was swaggering about the
court of Constantinople, as, when the East Goths first met him, what we
call Warden of the Marches, with some annual pay for his Goths. He was
insolent to Theodemir and his family, and they retaliated by bitter
hatred. It was intolerable for them, Amals, sons of Odin, to be insulted
by this upstart. So they went on for years, till the miserable religious
squabble fell out--you may read it in Gibbon--which ended in the Emperor
Zeno, a low-born and cunning man, suspected of the murder of his own son
by the princess Ariadne, being driven out of Constantinople by
Basiliscus. We need not enter into such matters, except as far as they
bear on the history of Dietrich the Amal. Dietrich the One-eyed helped
Basiliscus--and then Zeno seems to have sent for Dietrich the Amal to
help him. He came, but too late. Basiliscus' party had already broken
up; Basiliscus and his family had taken refuge in a church, from whence
Zeno enticed him, on the promise of shedding no blood, which he did not:
but instead, put him, his wife and children, in a dry cistern, walled it
up and left them.
Dietrich the Amal rose into power and great glory, and became 'son-in-
arms' to the Emperor. But the young Amal longed for adventures. He
offered to take his Ostrogoths into Italy, drive out Odoacer, and seat on
the throne of the West, Nepos, one of the many puppets who had been
hurled off it a few years before. Zeno had need of the young hero nearer
home, and persuaded him to stay in Constantinople, eat, drink, and be
merry.
Whereon Odoacer made Romulus Agustulus and the Roman Senate write to Zeno
that they wanted no Emperor save him at Constantinople; that they were
very happy under the excellent Odoacer, and that they therefore sent to
Zeno, as the rightful owner, all the Imperial insignia and ornaments;
things which may have been worn, some of them, by Augustus himself. And
so ended, even in name, the Empire of Rome. All which the Amal saw, and,
as will appear, did not forget.
Zeno gave the Amal all that the One-eyed had had before him, and paid the
Ostrogoths yearly as he had paid the One-eye's men. The One-eyed was
banished to his cantonments, and of course revolted. Zeno wanted to buy
him off, but the Amal would not hear of it; he would not help the Romans
against his rival, unless they swore perpetual enmity against him.
They did so, and he marched to the assistance of the wretched Empire. He
was to be met by Roman reinforcements at the Haemus. They never came;
and the Amal, disgusted and disheartened, found himself entangled in the
defiles of the Haemus, starving and worn out; with the One-eyed
entrenched on an inaccessible rock, where he dared not attack him.
Then followed an extraordinary scene. The One-eyed came down again and
again from his rock, and rode round the Amal's camp, shouting to him
words so true, that one must believe them to have been really spoken.
'Perjured boy, madman, betrayer of your race--do you not see that the
Roman plan is as always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us
falls, they, not we, will be the stronger. They never met you as they
promised, at the cities, nor here. They have sent you out here to perish
in the desert.'
Then the East Goths raised a cry. 'The One-eyed is right. The Amal
cares not that these men are Goths like ourselves.'
Then the One-eyed appeals to the Goths themselves, as he curses the Amal.
'Why are you killing your kinsmen? Why have you made so many widows?
Where is all their wealth gone, they who set out to fight for you? Each
of them had two or three horses: but now they are walking on foot behind
you like slaves,--free-men as well-born as yourself:--and you promised to
measure them out gold by the bushel.'
Was it not true? If young Dietrich had in him (and he shewed that he had
in after years) a Teuton's heart, may not that strange interview have
opened his eyes to his own folly, and taught him that the Teuton must be
his own master, and not the mercenary of the Romans?
The men cried out that it was true. He must make peace with the
One-eyed, or they would do it themselves; and peace was made. They both
sent ambassadors to Zeno; the Amal complaining of treachery; the One-eyed
demanding indemnity for all his losses. The Emperor was furious. He
tried to buy off the Amal by marrying him to a princess of the blood
royal, and making him a Caesar. Dietrich would not consent; he felt that
it was a snare. Zeno proclaimed the One-eyed an enemy to the Empire; and
ended by reinstating him in his old honours, and taking them from the
Amal. The Amal became furious, burnt villages, slaughtered the peasants,
even (the Greeks say) cut off the hands of his captives. He had broken
with the Romans at last. The Roman was astride of him, and of all
Teutons, like Sindbad's old man of the sea. The only question, as with
Sindbad, was whether he should get drunk, and give them a chance of
throwing the perfidious tyrant. And now the time was come. He was
compelled to ask himself, not--what shall I be in relation to myself: but
what shall I be in relation to the Kaiser of the Romans--a mercenary, a
slave, or a conqueror--for one of the three I must be?
So it went on, year after year--sometimes with terrible reverses for
Dietrich, till the year 480. Then the old One-eyed died, in a strange
way. Mounting a wild horse at the tent-door, the beast reared before he
could get his seat; afraid of pulling it over by the curb, he let it go.
A lance, in Gothic fashion, was hanging at the tent-door, and the horse
plunged the One-eyed against it. The point went deep into his side, and
the old fighting man was at rest for ever.
And then came a strange peripeteia for the Amal. Zeno, we know not why,
sent instantly for him. He had been ravaging, pursuing, defeating Roman
troops, or being defeated by them. Now he must come to Rome. His Goths
should have the Lower Danube. He should have glory and honour to spare.
He came. His ideal, at this time, seems actually to have been to live
like a Roman citizen in Constantinople, and help to govern the Empire.
Recollect, he was still little more than five and twenty years old.
So he went to Constantinople, and I suppose with him the faithful mother,
and faithful sister, who had been with him in all his wanderings. He had
a triumph decreed him at the Emperor's expense, was made Consul
Ordinarius ('which,' saith Jornandes, 'is accounted the highest good and
chief glory in the world') and Master-general, and lodged in the palace.
What did it all mean? Dietrich was dazzled by it, at least for a while.
What it meant, he found out too soon. He was to fight the Emperor's
battles against all rebels, and he fought them, to return irritated,
complaining (justly or unjustly) of plots against his life; to be
pacified, like a child, with the honour of an equestrian statue; then to
sink down into Byzantine luxury for seven inglorious years, with only one
flashing out of the ancient spirit, when he demanded to go alone against
the Bulgars, and killed their king with his own hand.
What woke him from his dream? The cry of his starving people.
The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men and
mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling
till their families were in want. They send to the Amal. 'While thou
art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving--come back ere we are
ruined.'
They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his mercenaries. He
was growing now to be a great power; styling himself 'King of nations
{109},' giving away to the Visigoths the Narbonnaise, the last remnant of
the Western Empire; collecting round him learned Romans like Symmachus,
Boethius, and Cassiodorus; respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly
doing his best to govern well. His mercenaries, however, would not be
governed. Under their violence and oppression agriculture and population
were both failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of 'AEmilia, Tuscia,
ceteraeque provinciae in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.'
Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the Goths
to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they despised
him himself as a man of low birth. But his father AEdecon had been chief
of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal blood. It is very
unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of Teutons would have followed
any man who had not Odin's blood in his veins. Was there a stain on
Odoacer from his early connexion with Attila? Or was the hatred against
his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste
Herules,--a question of race, springing out of those miserable
tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak? Be that as
it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury. He
had gone over the Alps into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood
of Vienna) and utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone
into Italy under his banner. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of
his old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments
laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the
mass. Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and carried
their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his 'noxious
wife;' and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly) the body of
St. Severinus himself. But this had been a small thing, if he had not
advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with Fava, the captive
king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards, in the approved fashion
of the ancient Romans on such occasions, to put Fava to death in cold
blood.
The records of this feat are to be found, as far as I know them, in one
short chapter (I. xix.) of Paulus Diaconus, and in Muratori's notes
thereto; but however small the records, the deed decided the fate of
Italy. Frederic, son of Fava, took refuge with the Ostrogoths, and
demanded revenge in the name of his royal race; and it is easy to
conceive that the sympathies of the Goths would be with him. An attack
(seemingly unprovoked) on an ancient Teutonic nation by a mere band of
adventurers was--or could easily be made--a grievous wrong, and clear
casus belli, over and above the innate Teutonic lust for fighting and
adventures, simply for the sake of 'the sport.'
Dietrich went back, and from that day, the dream of eastern luxury was
broken, and young Dietrich was a Goth again, for good and for evil.
He assembled the Goths, and marched straight on Constantinople, burning
and pillaging as he went. So say, at least, the Greek historians, of
whom, all through this strange story, no one need believe more than he
likes. Had the Goths had the writing of the life of Dietrich, we should
have heard another tale. As it is, we have, as it were, a life of Lord
Clive composed by the court scribes of Delhi.
To no Roman would he tell what was in his mind. Five leagues from
Constantinople he paused. Some say that he had compassion on the city
where he had been brought up. Who can tell? He demanded to speak to
Zeno alone, and the father in arms and his wild son met once more. There
was still strong in him the old Teutonic feudal instinct. He was 'Zeno's
man,' in spite of all. He asked (says Jornandes) Zeno's leave to march
against Odoacer, and conquer Italy. Procopius and the Valesian Fragment
say that Zeno sent him, and that in case of success, he was to reign
there till Zeno came. Zeno was, no doubt, glad to get rid of him at any
price. As Ennodius well says, 'Another's honour made him remember his
own origin, and fear the very legions which obeyed him--for that
obedience is suspected which serves the unworthy.' Rome was only
nominally under Zeno's dominion; and it mattered little to him whether
Herule or Gothic adventurer called himself his representative.
Then was held a grand function. Dietrich, solemnly appointed
'Patrician,' had Italy ceded to him by a 'Pragmatic' sanction, and Zeno
placed on his head the sacrum velamen, a square of purple, signifying in
Constantinople things wonderful, august, imperial--if they could only be
made to come to pass. And he made them come to pass. He gathered all
Teutonic heroes of every tribe, as well as his own; and through Roumelia,
and through the Alps, a long and dangerous journey, went Dietrich and his
Goths, with their wives and children, and all they had, packed on
waggons; living on their flocks and herds, grinding their corn in hand-
mills, and hunting as they went, for seven hundred miles of march;
fighting as they went with Bulgars and Sarmatians, who had swarmed into
the waste marches of Hungary and Carniola, once populous, cultivated, and
full of noble cities; fighting a desperate battle with the Gepidae, up to
their knees in a morass; till over the passes of the Julian Alps, where
icicles hung upon their beards, and their clothes cracked with frost,
they poured into the Venetian plains. It was a daring deed; and needed a
spirit like Dietrich's to carry it through.
Odoacer awaited him near the ruins of Aquileia. On the morning of the
fight, as he was arming, Dietrich asked his noble mother to bring him
some specially fine mantle, which she had embroidered for him, and put it
over his armour, 'that all men may see how he goes gayer into the fight
than ever he did into feast. For this day she shall see whether she have
brought a man-child into the world, or no.'
And in front of Verona (where the plain was long white with human bones),
he beat Odoacer, and after a short and sharp campaign, drove him to
Ravenna. But there, Roman fortifications, and Roman artillery, stopped,
as usual, the Goth; and Odoacer fulfilled his name so well, and stood so
stout, that he could only be reduced by famine; and at last surrendered
on terms, difficult now to discover.
Gibbon says, that there was a regular compact that they should enjoy
equal authority, and refers to Procopius: but Procopius only says, that
they should live together peaceably 'in that city.' Be that as it may,
Odoacer and his party were detected, after awhile, conspiring against
Dietrich, and put to death in some dark fashion. Gibbon, as advocatus
diaboli, of course gives the doubt against Dietrich, by his usual
enthymeme--All men are likely to be rogues, ergo, Dietrich was one.
Rather hard measure, when one remembers that the very men who tell the
story are Dietrich's own enemies. By far the most important of them, the
author of the Valesian Fragment, who considers Dietrich damned as an
Arian, and the murderer of Boethius and Symmachus, says plainly that
Odoacer plotted against his life. But it was a dark business at best.
Be that as it may, Dietrich the Amal found himself in one day king of all
Italy, without a peer. And now followed a three and thirty years' reign
of wisdom, justice, and prosperity, unexampled in the history of those
centuries. Between the days of the Antonines and those of Charlemagne, I
know no such bright spot in the dark history of Europe.
As for his transferring the third of the lands of Italy, which had been
held by Odoacer's men, to his own Goths,--that was just or unjust (even
putting out of the question the rights of conquest), according to what
manner of men Odoacer's mercenaries were, and what right they had to the
lands. At least it was done so, says Cassiodorus, that it notoriously
gave satisfaction to the Romans themselves. One can well conceive it.
Odoacer's men had been lawless adventurers; and now law was installed as
supreme. Dietrich, in his long sojourn at the Emperor's court, had
discovered the true secret of Roman power, which made the Empire terrible
even in her fallen fortunes; and that was Law. Law, which tells every
man what to expect, and what is expected of him; and so gives, if not
content, still confidence, energy, industry. The Goths were to live by
the Gothic law, the Romans by the Roman. To amalgamate the two races
would have been as impossible as to amalgamate English and Hindoos. The
parallel is really tolerably exact. The Goth was very English; and the
over-civilized, learned, false, profligate Roman was the very counterpart
of the modern Brahmin. But there was to be equal justice between man and
man. If the Goths were the masters of much of the Roman soil, still
spoliation and oppression were forbidden; and the remarkable edict or
code of Theodoric, shews how deeply into his great mind had sunk the idea
of the divineness of Law. It is short, and of Draconic severity,
especially against spoliation, cheating, false informers, abuse by the
clergy of the rights of sanctuary, and all offences against the honour of
women. I advise you all to study it, as an example of what an early
Teutonic king thought men ought to do, and could be made to do.
The Romans were left to their luxury and laziness; and their country
villas (long deserted) were filled again by the owners. The Goths were
expected to perform military service, and were drilled from their youth
in those military evolutions which had so often given the disciplined
Roman the victory over the undisciplined Goth, till every pomoerium
(boulevard), says Ennodius, might be seen full of boys and lads, learning
to be soldiers. Everything meanwhile was done to soothe the wounded
pride of the conquered. The senate of Rome was still kept up in name (as
by Odoacer), her nobles flattered by sonorous titles, and the officers of
the kingdom and the palace bore the same names as they would have done
under Roman emperors. The whole was an attempt to develop Dietrich's own
Goths by the only civilization which he knew, that of Constantinople: but
to engraft on it an order, a justice, a freedom, a morality, which was
the 'barbarian' element. The treasures of Roman art were placed under
the care of government officers; baths, palaces, churches, aqueducts,
were repaired or founded; to build seems to have been Dietrich's great
delight; and we have left us, on a coin, some image of his own palace at
Verona, a strange building with domes and minarets, something like a
Turkish mosque; standing, seemingly, on the arcades of some older Roman
building. Dietrich the Goth may, indeed, be called the founder of
'Byzantine' architecture throughout the Western world.
Meanwhile, agriculture prospered once more; the Pontine Marshes were
drained; the imperial ports restored, and new cities sprang up. 'The new
ones,' says Machiavelli, 'were Venice, Siena, Ferrara, Aquileia; and
those which became extended were Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Naples,
and Bologna.' Of these the great sea-ports, especially Venice, were
founded not by Goths, but by Roman and Greek fugitives: but it was the
security and liberality of Dietrich's reign which made their existence
possible; and Venice really owes far more to the barbarian hero, than to
the fabled patronage of St. Mark.
'From this devastation and new population,' continues Machiavelli, 'arose
new languages, which, partaking of the native idiom of the new people,
and of the old Roman, formed a new manner of discourse. Besides, not
only were the names of provinces changed, but also of lakes, rivers,
seas, and men; for France, Spain, and Italy are full of fresh names,
wholly different from the ancient.'
This reign of Dietrich was, in fact, the birth-hour of modern Italy; and,
as Machiavelli says, 'brought the country to such a state of greatness,
that her previous sufferings were unrecognizable.' We shall see
hereafter how the great Goth's work was all undone; and (to their
everlasting shame) by whom it was undone.
The most interesting records of the time are, without doubt, the letters
of Cassiodorus, the king's secretary and chancellor, which have come down
to us in great numbers. There are letters among them on all questions of
domestic and foreign policy: to the kings of the Varni, kings of the
Herules, kings of the Thuringer (who were still heathens beyond the Black
forest), calling on them all to join him and the Burgundians, and defend
his son-in-law Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, against Clovis and his
Franks. There are letters, too, bearing on the religious feuds of the
Roman population, and on the morals and social state of Rome itself, of
which I shall say nothing in this lecture, having cause to refer to them
hereafter. But if you wish to know the times, you must read Cassiodorus
thoroughly.
In his letters you will remark how most of the so-called Roman names are
Greek. You will remark, too, as a sign of the decadence of taste and
art, that though full of wisdom and practical morality, the letters are
couched in the most wonderful bombast to be met with, even in that age of
infimae Latinitatis. One can only explain their style by supposing that
King Dietrich, having supplied the sense, left it for Cassiodorus to
shape it as he thought best; and when the letter was read over to him,
took for granted (being no scholar) that that was the way in which Roman
Caesars and other cultivated personages ought to talk; admired his
secretary's learning; and probably laughed in his sleeve at the whole
thing, thinking that ten words of honest German would have said all that
he meant. As for understanding these flights of rhetoric, it is
impossible that Dietrich could have done so: perhaps not even Cassiodorus
himself. Take as one example, such a letter as this.--After a lofty
moral maxim, which I leave for you to construe--'In partem pietatis
recidit mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio praestat, qui poenam
debitam moderatione considerata palpaverit,'--Jovinus the curial is
informed, after the most complex method, that having first quarrelled
with a fellow-curial, and then proceeded to kill him, he is banished for
life to the isle of Volcano, among the Liparis. As a curial is a
gentleman and a government magistrate, the punishment is just enough; but
why should Cassiodorus (certainly not King Dietrich) finish a short
letter by a long dissertation on volcanoes in general, and Stromboli in
particular, insisting on the wonder that the rocks, though continually
burnt, are continually renewed by 'the inextricable potency of nature;'
and only returning to Jovinus to inform him that he will henceforth
follow the example of a salamander, which always lives in fire, 'being so
contracted by natural cold, that it is tempered by burning flame. It is
a thin and small animal, connected with worms, and clothed with a yellow
colour;' . . . Cassiodorus then returns to the main subject of volcanoes,
and ends with a story of Stromboli having broken out just as Hannibal
poisoned himself at the court of Prusias;--information which may have
been interesting, though not consoling, to poor Jovinus, in the prospect
of living there; but of which one would like to have had king Dietrich's
opinion. Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the
wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he
laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at
Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers--the two
classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which
they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to
know. For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a
contempt for the very scholarship which he employed, and forbade the
Goths to learn it--as the event proved, a foolish and fatal prejudice.
But it was connected in his mind with chicanery, effeminacy, and with the
cruel and degrading punishments of children. Perhaps the ferula had been
applied to him at Constantinople in old days. If so, no wonder that he
never learnt to write. 'The boy who trembles at a cane,' he used to say,
'will never face a lance.' His mother wit, meanwhile, was so shrewd that
'many of his sayings (says the unknown author of the invaluable Valesian
Fragment) remain among us to this day.' Two only, as far as I know, have
been preserved, quaint enough:
'He that hath gold, or a devil, cannot hide it.'