The Letters of Cassiodorus
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'etat_ 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