I have said that one of the most important
characteristics of Theodoric’s government of
Italy was that it was conducted in accordance with
the traditions of the Empire and administered mainly
by officials trained in the Imperial school.
To a certain extent the same thing is true of all
the Teutonic monarchies which arose in the fifth century
on the ruins of the Empire. In dealing with the
needs and settling the disputes of the large, highly-organised
communities, into whose midst they had poured themselves,
it was not possible, if it had been desirable, for
the rulers to remain satisfied with the simple, sometimes
barbarous, principles of law and administration which
had sufficed for the rude farmer-folk who dwelt in
isolated villages beyond the Rhine and the Danube.
Nor was this necessity disliked by the rulers themselves.
They soon perceived that the Roman law, with its tendency
to derive all power from the Imperial head of the
State, and the Roman official staff, an elaborate
and well-organised hierarchy, every member of which
received orders from one above him and transmitted
orders to those below, were far more favourable to
their own prerogative and gave them a far higher position
over against their followers and comrades in war,
than the institutions which had prevailed in the forests
of Germany. Hence, as I have said, all the new
barbarian royalties, even that of the Vandals in Africa
(in some respects more anti-Roman than any other),
preserved much of the laws and machinery of the Roman
Empire; but Theodoric’s Italian kingdom preserved
the most of all. It might in fact almost be looked
upon as a mere continuation of the old Imperial system,
only with a strong, laborious, martial Goth at the
head of affairs, able and willing to keep all the
members of the official hierarchy sternly to their
work, instead of the ruler whom the last three generations
had been accustomed to behold, a man decked with the
purple and diadem, but too weak, too indolent, too
nervously afraid of irritating some powerful captain
of foederati, or some wealthy Roman noble, to
be able to do justice to all classes of his subjects.
The composition of the official hierarchy
of the Empire is, from various sources, almost
as fully known to us as that of any state of modern
Europe.
Pre-eminent in dignity over all the
rest rose the “Illustrious” Praetorian
Prefect, the vicegerent of the sovereign, a man
who held towards Emperor or King nearly the same position
which a Grand Vizier holds towards a Turkish Sultan.
Like his sovereign he wore a purple robe (which reached
however only to his knees, not to his feet), and he
drove through the streets in a lofty official chariot.
It was for him to promulgate the Imperial laws, sometimes
to put forth edicts of his own. He proclaimed
what taxes were to be imposed each year, and their
produce came into his “Praetorian chest”.
He suggested to his sovereign the names of the governors
of the provinces, paid them their salaries, and exercised
a general superintendence over them, having even power
to depose them from their offices. And lastly,
he was the highest Judge of Appeal in the land, even
the Emperor himself having generally no power to reverse
his sentences.
There was another “Illustrious”
minister, who, during this century both in the Eastern
and Western Empire, was always treading on the heels
of the Praetorian Prefect, and trying to rob him of
some portion of his power. This was the Master
of the Offices the intermediary between the sovereign
and the great mass of the civil servants, to whom the
execution of his orders was entrusted. A swarm of
Agentes in Rebus (King’s messengers, bailiffs,
sheriff’s officers; we may call them by all
these designations) roved through the provinces, carrying
into effect the orders of the sovereign, always magnifying
their “master’s” dignity, (whence
they derived their epithet of “Magistriani",)
and seeking to depress the Praetorian Cohorts, who
discharged somewhat similar duties under the Praetorian
Prefect. The Master of the Offices, besides sharing
the counsels of his sovereign in relation to foreign
states, had also the arsenals under his charge, and
there was transferred to him from his rival, the Prefect,
the superintendence of the cursus publicus,
the great postal service of the Empire.
Again, somewhat overlapping, as it
seems to us, the functions of the Master of the Offices,
came the “Illustrious” Quaestor,
the head-rhetorician of the State, the official whose
business it was to put the thoughts of the sovereign
into fitting and eloquent words, either when he was
replying to the ambassadors of foreign powers, or when
he was issuing laws and proclamations to his own subjects.
As his duties and qualifications were of a more personal
kind than those of his two brother-ministers already
described, he had not like them a large official staff
waiting upon his orders.
There were two great financial ministers,
the Count of Sacred Largesses ("sacred”,
of course, is equivalent to “Imperial"), and
the Count of Private Domains, whose duties
practically related in the former case to the personal,
in the latter to the real, estate of the sovereign.
Or perhaps, for it is difficult exactly to define the
nature of their various duties, it would be better
to think of the Count of Sacred Largesses as
the Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the
Count of Private Domains as the Chief Commissioner
of Woods and Forests.
The Superintendent of the Sacred
Dormitory was the Grand Chamberlain of the Empire,
and commanding, as he did, the army of pages, grooms
of the bed-chamber, vestiaries, and life-guardsmen,
who ministered to the myriad wants of an Arcadius
or a Honorius, he was not the least important among
the chief officers of the State.
These great civil ministers, eight
in number under the Western Emperors (for there were
three Praetorian Prefects, one for the Gauls,
one for Italy, and one for the City of Rome), formed,
with the military officers of highest rank (generally
five in number), the innermost circle of “Illustres”,
who may be likened to the Cabinet of the Emperor.
At this time the Cabinet of Illustres may have
been smaller by one or two members, on account of
the separation of the Gaulish provinces from Rome,
but we are not able to speak positively on this point.
Nearly every one of these great ministers
of state had under him a large, ambitious, and often
highly-paid staff of subordinates, who were called
his Officium. The civil service was at least
as regular and highly specialised a profession under
the Emperors and under Theodoric as it is in any modern
State. It is possible that we should have to go
to the Celestial Empire of China to find its fitting
representative. A large number of singularii,
rationalii, clavicularii, and the like (whom we
should call policemen, subordinate clerks, and gaolers)
formed the “Unlettered Staff” (Militia
Illiterata), who stood on the lowest stage of
the bureaucratic pyramid. Above these was the
lettered staff, beginning with the humble chancellor
(Cancellarius), who sat by the cancelli
(latticework), at the bottom of the Court (to prevent
importunate suitors from venturing too far), and rising
to the dignified Princeps or Cornicularius,
who was looked upon as equal in rank to a Count, and
who expected to make an income of not less than L600
a year, equivalent to two or three times that amount
in our day.
All this great hierarchy of officials
wielded powers derived, mediately or immediately,
from the Emperor (or in the Ostrogothic monarchy from
the King), and great as was their brilliancy in the
eyes of the dazzled multitudes who crouched before
them, it was all reflected from him, who was the central
sun of their universe. But there were still two
institutions which were in theory independent of Emperor
or King, which were yet held venerable by men, and
which had come down from the days of the great world-conquering
republic, or the yet earlier days of Romulus and Numa.
These two institutions were the Consulship and the
Senate.
The Consuls, as was said in
an earlier chapter, still appeared to preside over
the Roman Republic, as they had in truth presided,
wielding between them the full power of a king, when
Brutus and Collatinus, a thousand years before Theodoric’s
commencement of the siege of Ravenna, took their seat
upon the curule chairs, and donned the trabea
of the Consul. Still, though utterly shorn of
its power, the glamour of the venerable office remained.
The Emperor himself seemed to add to his dignity when
he allowed himself to be nominated as Consul, and in
nothing was the cupidity of the tyrant Emperors and
the moderation of the patriot Emperors better displayed
than in the number of Consulships which they claimed
or forbore from claiming. Ever since the virtual
division of the Empire into an Eastern and Western
portion, it had been usual, though not absolutely
obligatory, for one Consul to be chosen out of each
half of the Orbis Romanus, and in reading the
contemporary chronicles we can almost invariably tell
to which portion the author belongs by observing to
which Consul’s name he gives the priority.
As has been already stated, after the resumption of
friendly relations between Ravenna and Constantinople,
Theodoric, while naming the Western Consul, sent a
courteous notification of the fact to the Emperor,
by whom his nomination seems to have been always accepted
without question. The great Ostrogoth, having
once worn the Consular robes and distributed largess
to “the Roman People” in the streets of
Constantinople, does not seem to have cared a second
time to assume that ancient dignity, but in the year
519, towards the end of his reign, he named his son-in-law,
Eutharic, Consul, and the splendour of Eutharic’s
year of office was enhanced by the fact that he had
the then reigning Emperor, Justin, for his colleague.
As for the Senate, it too was still in appearance
what it had ever been,the highest Council
in the State, the assembly of kings which overawed
the ambassador of Pyrrhus, the main-spring, or, if
not the main-spring, at any rate the balance-wheel,
of the administrative machine. This it was in
theory, for there had never been any formal abolition
of its existence or abrogation of its powers.
In practice it was just what the sovereign, whether
called Emperor or King, allowed it to be. A self-willed
and arbitrary monarch, like Caligula or Domitian,
would reduce its functions to a nullity. A wise
and moderate Emperor, like Trajan or Marcus Aurelius,
would consult it on all important state-affairs, and,
while reserving to himself both the power of initiation
and that of final control, would make of it a real
Council of State, a valuable member of the governing
body of the Empire. The latter seems to have
been the policy of Theodoric. Probably the very
fact of his holding a somewhat doubtful position towards
the Emperor at Constantinople made him more willing
to accept all the moral support that could be given
him by the body which was in a certain sense older
and more august than any Emperor, the venerable Senate
of Rome. At any rate, the letters in which he
announces to the Senate the various acts, especially
the nomination of the great officials of his kingdom,
in which he desires their concurrence, are couched
in such extremely courteous terms, that sometimes
civility almost borders on servility. Notwithstanding
this, however, it is quite plain that it was always
thoroughly understood who was master in Italy, and
that any attempt on the part of the Senate to wrest
any portion of real power from Theodoric would have
been instantly and summarily suppressed.
I have said that it was only by the
aid of officials, trained in the service of the Empire
that Theodoric, or indeed any of the new barbarian
sovereigns, could hope to keep the machine of civil
government in working order. We have, fortunately,
a little information as to some of these officials,
and an elaborate self-drawn picture of one of them.
Liberius had been a faithful
servant of Odovacar; and had to the last remained
by the sinking vessel of his fortunes. This fidelity
did not injure him in the estimation of the conqueror.
When all was over, he came, with no eagerness, and
with unconcealed sorrow for the death of his former
master, to offer his services to Theodoric, who gladly
accepted them, and gave him at once the pre-eminent
dignity of Praetorian Prefect. His wise and economical
management of the finances filled the royal exchequer
without increasing the burdens of the tax-payer, and
it is probable that the early return of prosperity
to Italy, which was described in the last chapter,
was, in great measure, due to the just and statesmanlike
administration of Liberius. In the delicate business
of allotting to the Gothic warriors the third part
of the soil of Italy, which seems to have been their
recognised dividend on Theodoric’s Italian speculation,
he so acquitted himself as to win the approbation
of all. It is difficult for us to understand how
such a change of ownership can have brought with it
anything but heart-burning and resentment. But
(1) there are not wanting indications that, owing to
evil influences both economic and political, there
was actually a large quantity of good land lying unoccupied
in Italy in the fifth century; and (2) there had already
been one expropriation of the same kind for the benefit
of the soldiers of Odovacar. In so far as this
allotment of Thirds merely followed the lines
of that earlier redistribution, but little of a grievance
was caused to the Italian owner. An Ostrogoth,
the follower of Theodoric, stepped into the position
of a slain Scyrian or Turcilingian, the follower of
Odovacar, and the Italian owner suffered no further
detriment. Still there must have been some loss
to the provincials and some cases of hardship
which would be long and bitterly remembered, before
every family which crossed the Alps in the Gothic
waggons was safely settled in its Italian home.
It is therefore not without some qualification that
we can accept the statement of the official panegyrist
of the Gothic regime, who declares that in
this business of the allotment of the Thirds “Liberius
joined both the hearts and the properties of the two
nations, Gothic and Roman. For whereas neighbourhood
often proves a cause of enmity, with these men communion
of farms proved a cause of concord. Thus the division
of the soil promoted the concord of the owners; friendship
grew out of the loss of the provincials, and
the land gained a defender, whose possession of part
guaranteed the quiet enjoyment of the remainder”.
It is possible that there was some foundation of truth
for the last statement. After the fearful convulsions
through which the whole Western Empire had passed,
and with the strange paralysis of the power of self-defence
which had overtaken the once brave and hardy population
of Italy, it is possible that the presence, near to
each considerable Italian landowner, of a Goth whose
duty to his king obliged him to defend the land from
foreign invasion, and to suppress with a strong hand
all robbery and brigandage, may have been felt in some
cases as a compensation even for whatever share of
the soil of Italy was transferred to Goth from Roman
by the Chief Commissioner, Liberius.
Two eminent Romans, whom in the early
years of his reign Theodoric placed in high offices
of state, were the two successive ambassadors to Constantinople,
Faustus and Festus. Both seem to
have held the high dignity of Praetorian Prefect.
We do not, however, hear much as to the career of
Festus, and what we hear of Faustus is not altogether
to his credit. He had been for several years
practically the Prime Minister of Theodoric, when
in an evil hour for his reputation he coveted the estate
of a certain Castorius, whose land adjoined his own.
Deprived of his patrimony, Castorius appealed, not
in vain, to the justice of Theodoric, whose ears were
not closed, as an Emperor’s would probably have
been, to the cry of a private citizen against a powerful
official. “We are determined”, says
Theodoric, in his reply to the petition of Castorius,
“to assist the humble and to repress the violence
of the proud. If the petition of Castorius prove
to be well-founded, let the spoiler restore to Castorius
his property and hand over besides another estate of
equal value. If the Magnificent Faustus have
employed any subordinate in this act of injustice,
bring him to us bound with chains that he may pay for
the outrage in person, if he cannot do so in purse.
If on any future occasion that now known craftsman
of evil (Faustus) shall attempt to injure the aforesaid
Castorius, let him be at once fined fifty pounds of
gold (L2,000). Greatest of all punishments will
be the necessity of beholding the untroubled estate
of the man whom he sought to ruin. Behold herein
a deed which may well chasten and subdue the hearts
of all our great dignitaries when they see that not
even a Praetorian Prefect is permitted to trample
on the lowly, and that when we put forth our arm to
help, such an one’s power of injuring the wretched
fails him. From this may all men learn how great
is our love of justice, since we are willing to diminish
even the power of our judges, that we may increase
the contentment of our own conscience”.
This edict was followed by a letter to the Illustrious
Faustus himself, in which that grasping governor was
reminded that human nature frequently requires a change,
and permission was graciously given him to withdraw
for four months into the country. At the end
of that time he was without fail to return to the capital,
since no Roman Senator ought to be happy if permanently
settled anywhere but at Rome. It is tolerably
plain that the four months’ villeggiatura
was really a sentence of temporary banishment, and
we may probably conclude that the Magnificent Faustus
never afterwards held any high position under Theodoric.
The letters announcing the King’s
judgment in this matter, like all the other extant
state-papers of Theodoric, were written by a man who
was probably by the fall of Faustus raised a step
in the official hierarchy, and who was certainly for
the last twenty years of the reign of Theodoric one
of the most conspicuous of his Roman officials.
This was Cassiodorus, or, to give him his full name,
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, a man,
whose life and character require to be described in
some detail.
Cassiodorus was sprung from a noble
Roman family, which had already given three of its
members in lineal succession (all bearing the name
Cassiodorus) to the service of the State. His
great-grandfather, of “Illustrious” rank,
defended Sicily and Calabria from the incursions of
the Vandals. His grandsire, a Tribune in the army,
was sent by the Emperor Valentinian III. on an important
embassy to Attila. His father filled first one
and then the other of the two highest financial offices
in the State under Odovacar. On the overthrow
of that chieftain, he, like Liberius, transferred
his services to Theodoric, who employed him as governor
first of Sicily, then of Calabria, and finally, about
the year 500, conferred upon him the highest dignity
of all, that of Praetorian Prefect. The ancestral
possessions of the Cassiodori were situated m that
southernmost province, sometimes likened to the toe
of Italy, which was then called Bruttii, and is now
called Calabria. It was a land rich in cattle,
renowned for its cheese and for its aromatic, white
Palmatian wine; and veins of gold were said to be in
its mountains. Here, in the old Greek city of
Scyllacium (Sguillace), “a city perched
upon a high hill overlooking the sea, sunny yet fanned
by cool Mediterranean breezes, and looking peacefully
on the cornfields, the vineyards, and the olive-groves
around her", Cassiodorus was born, about the year
480. He was therefore probably some twelve or
thirteen years of age when the long strife between
Odovacar and Theodoric was ended by the murder scene
in the palace at Ravenna.
Like all the young Roman nobles who
aspired to the honours and emoluments of public life,
Cassiodorus studied philosophy and rhetoric, and,
according to the standard of the age, a degraded standard,
he acquired great proficiency in both lines of study.
When his father was made Praetorian Prefect (about
the year 500), the young rhetorician received an appointment
as Consiliarius, or Assessor in the Prefect’s
court, at a salary which probably did not exceed forty
or fifty pounds. While he was holding this position,
it fell to his lot to pronounce a laudatory oration
on Theodoric (perhaps on the occasion of one of his
visits to Rome), and the eloquence of the young Consiliarius
so delighted the King, that he was at once made an
“Illustrious” Quaestor, thus receiving
what we should call cabinet-rank while he was still
considerably under thirty years of age. The Quaestor,
as has been said, was the Public Orator of the State.
It devolved upon him to reply to the formal harangues
in which the ambassadors of foreign nations greeted
his master, to answer the petitions of his subjects,
and to see that the edicts of the sovereign were expressed
in proper terms. The post exactly fitted the
intellectual tendencies of Cassiodorus, who was never
so happy as when he was wrapping up some commonplace
thought in a garment of sonorous but turgid rhetoric;
and the simple honesty of his moral nature, simple
in its very vanity and honest in its childlike egotism,
coupled as it was with real love for his country and
loyal zeal for her welfare, endeared him in his turn
to Theodoric, with whom he had many “gloriosa
colloquia” (as he calls them), conversations
in which the young, learned, and eloquent Roman poured
forth for his master the stored up wine of generations
of philosophers and poets, while the kingly barbarian
doubtless unfolded some of the propositions of that
more difficult science, the knowledge of men, which
he had acquired by long and arduous years of study
in the council-chamber, on the mountain-march, and
on the battle-field.
We can go at once to the fountain-head
for information as to the character of Cassiodorus.
When he was promoted, soon after the death of Theodoric,
to the rank of Praetorian Prefect, it became his duty,
as Quaestor to the young King Athalaric (Theodoric’s
successor), to inform himself by an official letter
of the honour conferred upon him. In writing
this letter, he does not deviate from the usual custom
of describing the virtues and accomplishments which
justify the new minister’s promotion. Why
indeed should he keep silence on such an occasion?
No one could know the good qualities of Cassiodorus
so well or so intimately as Cassiodorus himself, and
accordingly the Quaestor sets forth, with all the
rhetoric of which he had such an endless supply, the
virtues and the accomplishments which his observant
eye has discovered in himself, the new Praetorian
Prefect. Such a course would certainly not be
often pursued by a modern statesman, but there is a
pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds
will be more attractive than our present methods,
the “inspired” article in a hired newspaper,
or the feigned reluctance to receive a testimonial
which, till the receiver suggested it, no one had
dreamed of offering.
This then is how Cassiodorus, in 533,
describes his past career: “You came
(his young sovereign, Athalaric, is supposed to be
addressing him) in very early years to the dignity
of Quaestor; and mv grandfather’s (Theodoric’s)
wonderful insight into character was never more abundantly
proved than in your case, for he found you to be endued
with rare conscientiousness, and already ripe in your
knowledge of the laws. You were in truth the
chief glory of your times, and you won his favour by
arts which none could blame, for his mind, by nature
anxious in all things, was able to lay aside its cares
while you supported the weight of the royal counsels
with the strength of your eloquence. In you he
had a charming secretary, a rigidly upright judge,
a minister to whom avarice was unknown. You never
fixed a scandalous tariff for the sale of his benefits;
you chose to take your reward in public esteem, not
in riches. Therefore it was that this most righteous
ruler chose you to be honoured by his glorious friendship,
because he saw you to be free from all taint of corrupt
vices. How often did he fix your place among his
white-haired counsellors; inasmuch as they, by the
experience of years, had not come up to the point
from which you had started! He found that he
could safely praise your excellent disposition, open-handed
in bestowing benefits, tightly closed against the
vices of avarice”.
“Thus you passed on to the dignity
of Master of the Offices, which you obtained,
not by a pecuniary payment, but as a testimony to your
character. In that office you were ever ready
to help the Quaestors, for when pure eloquence was
needed men always resorted to you; and, in fact, when
you were at hand and ready to help, there was no accurate
division of labour among the various offices of the
State. No one could find an occasion to murmur
aught against you, although you bore all the unpopularity
which accompanies the favour of a prince”.
Your detractors were conquered by
the integrity of your life; your adversaries, bowing
to public opinion, were obliged to praise even while
they hated you.
“To the lord of the land you
showed yourself a friendly judge and an intimate minister.
When public affairs no longer claimed him, he would
ask you to tell him the stories in which wise men of
old have clothed their maxims, that by his own deeds
he might equal the ancient heroes. The courses
of the stars, the ebb and flow of the sea, the marvels
of springing fountains,nto all these subjects
would that most acute questioner inquire, so that
by his diligent investigations into the nature of
things, he seemed to be a philosopher in the purple”.
This sketch of the character of the
minister throws light incidentally on that of the
monarch who employed him. Of course, as a general
rule, history cannot allow the personages with whom
she deals to write their own testimonials, but in
this case there is reason to think that the self-portraiture
of Cassiodorus is accurate in its main outlines, though
our modern taste would have suggested the employment
of somewhat less florid colouring.
One literary service which Cassiodorus
rendered to the Ostrogothic monarchy is thus described
by himself, still speaking in his young king’s
name and addressing the Roman Senate.
“He was not satisfied with extolling
surviving Kings, from whom their panegyrist might
hope for a reward. He extended his labours to
our remote ancestry, learning from books that which
the hoary memories of our old men scarcely retained.
He drew forth from their hiding-place the Kings of
the Goths, hidden by long forgetfulness. He restored
the Amals in all the lustre of their lineage, evidently
proving that we have Kings for our ancestors up to
the seventeenth generation. He made the origin
of the Goths part of Roman history, collecting into
one wreath the flowers which had previously been scattered
over the wide plains of literature. Consider,
therefore, what love he showed to you (the Senate)
in uttering our praises, while teaching that the nation
of your sovereign has been from ancient time a marvellous
people: so that you who from the days of your
ancestors have been truly deemed noble are also now
ruled over by the long-descended progeny of Kings”.
These sentences relate to the “Gothic
History” of Cassiodorus, which once existed
in twelve books, but is now unfortunately lost.
A hasty abridgment of it, made by an ignorant monk
named Jordanes, is all that now remains. Even
this, with its many faults, is a most precious monument
of the early history of the Teutonic invaders of the
Empire, and it is from its pages that much of the
information contained in the previous chapters is
drawn. The object of the original statesman-author
in composing his “Gothic History” is plainly
stated in the above sentences. He wishes to heal
the wound given to Roman pride by the fact of the
supremacy in Italy of a Gothic lord; and in order to
effect this object he strings together all that he
can collect of the Sagas of the Gothic people,
showing the great deeds of the Amal progenitors of
Theodoric, whose lineage he traces back into distant
centuries. “It is true” he seems
to say to the Senators of Rome, “that you, who
once ruled the world, are now ruled by an alien; but
at least that alien is no new-comer into greatness.
He and his progenitors have been crowned Kings for
centuries. His people, who are quartered among
you and claim one-third of the soil of Italy, are
an old, historic people. Their ancestors fought
under the walls of Troy; they defeated Cyrus, King
of Persia; they warred not ingloriously with Perdiccas
of Macedonia”.
These classical elements of the Gothic
history of Cassiodorus (which rest chiefly on a misunderstanding
of the vague and unscientific term “Scythians”)
are valueless for the purposes of history; but the
old Gothic Sagas, of which he has evidently also
preserved some fragments, are both interesting and
valuable. When a nation has played so important
a part on the theatre of the world as that assigned
to the Goths, even their legendary stories of the
past are precious. Whether these early Amal Kings
fought and ruled and migrated as the Sagas represent
them to have done, or not, in any case the belief
that these were their achievements was a part of the
intellectual heritage of the Gothic peoples.
The songs to whose lullaby the cradle of a great nation
is rocked are a precious possession to the historian.
The other most important work of Cassiodorus
is the collection of letters called the Variae,
in twelve books. This collection contains all
the chief state-papers composed by him during the period
(somewhat more than thirty years) which was covered
by his official life. Five books are devoted
to the letters written at the dictation of Theodoric;
two to the Formulae or model-letters addressed
to the various dignitaries of the State on their accession
to office; three to the letters written in the name
of Theodoric’s immediate successors (his grandson,
daughter, and nephew); and two to those written by
Cassiodorus himself in his own name when he had attained
the crowning dignity of Praetorian Prefect.
I have already made some extracts
from this collection of “Various Epistles”
and the reader, from the specimens thus submitted to
him, will have formed some conception of the character
of the author’s style. That style is diffuse
and turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the prevailing
faults of the sixth century, an age of literary decay,
when the language of Cicero and Virgil was falling
into its dotage. There is much ill-timed display
of irrelevant learning, and a grievous absence of
simplicity and directness, in the “Various Epistles”.
It must be regarded as a misfortune for Theodoric
that his maxims of statesmanship, which were assuredly
full of manly sense and vigour, should have reached
us only in such a shape, diluted with the platitudes
and false rhetoric of a scholar of the decadence.
Still, even through all these disguises, it is easy
to discern the genuine patriotism both of the great
King and of his minister, their earnest desire that
right, not might, should determine every case that
came before them, their true insight into the vices
and the virtues of each of the two different nations
which now shared Italy between them, their persevering
endeavour to keep civilitas intact, their determination
to oppose alike the turbulence of the Goth and the
chicane of the scheming Roman.
As specimens of the rhetoric of Cassiodorus
when he is trying his highest flights, the reader
may care to peruse the two following letters.
The first was written to Faustus the Praetorian
Prefect, to complain of his delay in forwarding some
cargoes of corn from Calabria to Rome:
“What are you waiting for?”
says Cassiodorus, writing in his master’s name.
“Why are your ships not spreading their sails
to the breeze? When the South-wind is blowing
and your oarsmen are urging on your vessels, has the
sucking-fish (Echeneis) fastened its bite upon
them through the liquid waves? Or have the shell-fishes
of the Indian Sea with similar power stayed your keels
with their lips: those creatures whose quiet
touch is said to hold back, more than the tumultuous
elements can possibly urge forward? The idle
bark stands still, though winged with swelling sails,
and has no way on her though the breeze is propitious;
she is fixed without anchors; she is moored without
cables, and these tiny animals pull back, more than
all such favouring powers can propel. Therefore
when the subject wave would hasten the vessel’s
course, it appears that it stands fixed on the surface
of the sea: and in marvellous style the floating
ship is retained immovable, while the wave is hurried
along by countless currents.
“But let us describe the nature
of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of
the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness
by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand
of him who attacks it is so deadenedeven
through the spear by which it is itself woundedthat
while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed
without sense or motion. I think some such misfortunes
must have happened to men who are unable to move themselves.
“But no. The sucking-fish
of these men is their hindering corruption. The
shell-fishes that bite them are their avaricious hearts.
The torpedo that benumbs them is lying guile.
With perverted ingenuity they manufacture delays,
that they may seem to have met with a run of ill-luck.
“Let your Greatness, whom it
especially behoves to take thought for such matters,
cause that this be put right by speediest rebuke:
lest the famine, which will otherwise ensue, be deemed
to be the child of negligence rather than of the barrenness
of the land”.
The occasion of the second letter
(Var., x., 30.) was as follows. Some brazen images
of elephants which adorned the Sacred Street of Rome
were falling into ruin, Cassiodorus, writing in the
name of one of Theodoric’s successors, to the
Prefect of the City, orders that their gaping limbs
should be strengthened by hooks, and their pendulous
bellies should be supported by masonry. He then
proceeds to give to the admiring Prefect some wonderful
information as to the natural history of the elephant.
He regrets that the metal effigies should
be so soon destroyed, when the animal which they represent
is accustomed to live more than a thousand years.
“The living elephant”
he says, “when it is once prostrate on the ground,
cannot rise unaided, because it has no joints in its
feet. Hence when they are helping men to fell
timber, you see numbers of them lying on the earth
till men come and help them to rise. Thus this
creature, so formidable by its size, is really more
helpless than the tiny ant. The elephant, wiser
than all other creatures, renders religious adoration
to the Ruler of all: also to good princes, but
if a tyrant approach, it will not pay him the homage
which is due only to the virtuous. It uses its
proboscis, that nose-like hand which Nature has given
it in compensation for its very short neck, for the
benefit of its master, accepting the presents which
will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously,
remembering that fatal fall into the hunter’s
pit which was the beginning of its captivity.
When requested to do so, it exhales its breath, which
is said to be a remedy for the headache.
“When it comes to water, it
sucks up a vast quantity in its trunk, and then at
the word of command squirts it forth like a shower.
If any one have treated its demands with contempt,
it pours forth such a stream of dirty water over him
that one would think that a river had entered his
house. For this beast has a wonderfully long memory,
both of injury and of kindness. Its eyes are
small but move solemnly, so that there is a sort of
royal majesty in its appearance: and it despises
scurrile jests, while it always looks with pleasure
on that which is honourable”.
It must be admitted that if the official
communications of modern statesmen thus anxiously
combined amusement with instruction, the dull routine
of “I have the honour to inform” and “I
beg to remain your obedient humble servant”,
would acquire a charm of which it is now destitute.
I have translated two letters which
show the ludicrous side of the literary character
of Cassiodorus. In justice to this honest, if
somewhat pedantic, servant of Theodoric, I will close
this sketch of his character with a state-paper of
a better type, and one which incidentally throws some
light on the social condition of Italy under the Goths.
“THEODORIC to the Illustrious Neudes. (Var.,
v., 29.)
“We were moved to sympathy by
the long petition of Ocer but yet more by beholding
the old hero, bereft of the blessing of sight, inasmuch
as the calamities which we witness make more impression
upon us than those of which we only hear. He,
poor man, living on in perpetual darkness, had to
borrow the sight of another to hasten to our presence
in order that he might feel the sweetness of our clemency,
though he could not gaze upon our countenance.
“He complains that Gudila and
Oppas (probably two Gothic nobles or a Gothic chief
and his wife) have reduced him to a state of slavery,
a condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he
once served in our army as a free man. We marvel
that such a man should be dragged into bondage who
(on account of his infirmity) ought to have been liberated
by a lawful owner. It is a new kind of ostentation
to claim the services of such an one, the sight of
whom shocks you, and to call that man a slave, to
whom you ought rather to minister with divine compassion.
“He adds also that all claims
of this nature have been already judged invalid after
careful examination by Count Pythias, a man celebrated
for the correctness of his judgments. But now
overwhelmed by the weight of his calamity, he cannot
assert his freedom by his own right hand, which in
the strong man is the most effectual advocate of his
claims. We, however, whose peculiar property
it is to administer justice indifferently, whether
between men of equal or unequal condition, do by this
present mandate decree, that if, in the judgment of
the aforesaid Pythias, Ocer have proved himself free-born,
you shall at once remove those who are harassing him
with their claims, nor shall they dare any longer
to mock at the calamities of others: these people
who once convicted ought to have been covered with
shame for their wicked designs”.