The Letters of Cassiodorus
Burgundisch-Romanischen Koenigreichs, 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
Koeniglich Saechsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, iii. 547-696.]
[Footnote 38: 'Dass die ganze Procedur von der uebelsten 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