The Letters of Cassiodorus
appears) the era of the birth of Christ, and whose system of
chronology founded on this event has been accepted by all the nations
of Christendom. At the conclusion of this the first part of the
treatise we find some general remarks on the nature of the monastic
life, and some pictures of Vivarium and its neighbourhood, to which we
are indebted for some of the information contained in the preceding
pages. The book ends with a prayer, and contains thirty-three
chapters, the same number, remarks Cassiodorus (who is addicted to
this kind of moralising on numbers) that was reached by the years of
the life of Christ on earth.
[Footnote 88: 1. Octateuchus (Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth).
2. Kings (Samuel and Kings, Chronicles).
3. Prophets (Four Major, including Daniel, and Twelve Minor).
4. Psalms.
5. Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus).
6. Hagiographa (Tobias, Esther, Judith, Maccabees, Esdras).
7. Gospels.
8. Epistles of the Apostles (including that to the Hebrews).
9. Acts of the Apostles and Apocalypse.]
[Footnote 89: The remarks on Marcellinus Comes and Prosper are worth
transcribing: 'Hunc [Eusebium] subsecutus est suprascriptus
Marcellinus Illyricianus, qui adhuc patricii Justiniani fertur egisse
cancellos; sed meliore conditione devotus, a tempore Theodosii
principis usque ad finem imperii triumphalis Augusti Justiniani opus
suum, Domino juvante, perduxit; ut qui ante fuit in obsequio suscepto
gratus, postea ipsius imperio copiose amantissimus appareret.' [The
allusion to 'finem imperii Justiniani' was probably added in a later
revision of the Institutiones.] 'Sanctus quoque Prosper Chronica ab
Adam ad Genserici tempora et urbis Romae depraedationem usque
perduxit.']
The second part of the treatise, commonly called 'De Artibus ac
Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum,' contains so much as the author
thought that every monk should be acquainted with concerning the four
liberal arts--Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Mathematics--the last of
which is divided into the four 'disciplines' of Arithmetic, Geometry,
Music, and Astronomy. As illustrating the relative importance of these
sciences (as we call them) as apprehended by Cassiodorus, it is
curious to observe that while Geometry and Astronomy occupy only about
one page, and Arithmetic and Music two pages each, Logic takes up
eighteen pages, Grammar two, and Rhetoric six.
[Sidenote: De Orthographia.]
(5) Some other works, chiefly of a grammatical kind[90], which have
now perished, together with the exegetical treatises already named,
occupied the leisure hours of the old age of Cassiodorus. At length,
in the ninety-third year of his age, the veteran statesman, nobleman,
and judge crowned his life of useful service by writing for his
beloved monks his still extant treatise 'De Orthographia[91].' He
tells us that the monks suddenly exclaimed, 'What doth it profit us to
study either those works which the ancients have composed or those
which your Wisdom has caused to be added to the list, if we are
altogether ignorant how we ought to write these things, and on the
other hand cannot understand and accurately represent in speech the
words which we find written?' In other words, 'Give us a treatise on
spelling.' The venerable teacher gladly complied with the request, and
compiled from twelve grammarians[92] various rules, the observance of
which would prevent the student from committing the usual faults in
spelling. It is no doubt true[93] that this work is a mere collection
of excerpts from other authors, not arranged on any systematic
principle. Still, even as such a collection, it does great credit to
the industry of a nonagenarian; and it seems to me that there is much
in it which a person who was studying the transition of Latin into the
Lingua Volgare might peruse with profit. To an epigraphist especially
it must be interesting to see what were the mistakes which an
imperfectly educated Italian in that age was most likely to commit.
The confusion between _b_ and _v_ was evidently a great source of
error, and their nice discrimination, to which Cassiodorus devotes
four chapters, a very _crux_ of accurate scholarship. We see also from
a passage in the 'De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum[94]' that the
practice of assimilating the last letter of the prefix in compound
words, like i_l_luminatio, i_r_risio, i_m_probus, though it had been
introduced, was as yet hardly universal; and similarly that the monks
required to be instructed to write qui_c_quam for euphony, instead of
qui_d_quam.
[Footnote 90: They were a compilation from the 'Artes' of Donatus,
from a book on Etymologies (perhaps also by Donatus), and from a
treatise by Sacerdos on Schemata; and a short Table of Contents of the
Books of Scripture, prepared in such a form as to be easily committed
to memory.]
[Footnote 91: Ad amantissimos orthographos discutiendos anno aetatis
meae nonagesimo tertio (Domino adjuvante) perveni.]
[Footnote 92: They were Donatus, Cn. Cornutus, Velius Longus, Curtius
Valerianus, Papirianus, Adamantius Martyrius, Eutiches, Caesellius,
Lucius Caecilius, and 'Priscianus grammaticus, qui nostro tempore
Constantinopoli doctor fuit.' Two names seem to be omitted by
Cassiodorus.]
[Footnote 93: As stated by Ebert (p. 481).]
[Footnote 94: Cap. xv.]
[Sidenote: Death of Cassiodorus, 575 (?).]
The treatise 'De Orthographia' was the last product, as far as we
know, of the industrious brain of Cassiodorus. Two years after its
composition the aged statesman and scholar, in the ninety-sixth year
of his age, entered into his well-earned rest[95]. The death of
Cassiodorus occurred (as I believe) in the year 575, three years
before the death of the Emperor Justin II, nephew and successor of
Justinian. The period covered by his life had been one of vast
changes. Born when the Kingdom of Odovacar was only four years old,
he had as a young man seen that Kingdom overthrown by the arms of
Theodoric; he had sat by the cradle of the Ostrogothic monarchy, and
mourned over its grave; had seen the eunuch Narses supreme vicegerent
of the Emperor; had heard the avalanche of the Lombard invasion
thunder over Italy, and had outlived even the Lombard invader Alboin.
Pope Leo, the tamer of Attila and the hero of Chalcedon, had not been
dead twenty years when Cassiodorus was born. Pope Gregory the Great,
the converter of England, was within fifteen years of his accession to
the Pontificate when Cassiodorus died. The first great schism between
the Eastern and Western Churches was begun in his boyhood and ended
before he had reached old age. He saw the irretrievable ruin of Rome,
such as Augustus and Trajan had known her; the extinction of the Roman
Senate; the practical abolition of the Consulate; the close of the
schools of philosophy at Athens.
[Footnote 95: In assigning the death of Cassiodorus to the
ninety-sixth year of his age I rest upon the authority of Trittheim
(as quoted in the earlier part of this chapter), who appears to me to
have preserved the chronology which was generally accepted, before the
question became entangled by the confusion between Cassiodorus and his
father.]
Reverting to the line of thought with which this chapter opened, if
one were asked to specify any single life which more than another was
in contact both with the Ancient World and the Modern, none could be
more suitably named than the life of Cassiodorus.
NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SQUILLACE.
The chief conclusions which Mr. Evans came to after his two days'
study of the country about Squillace are these:--
[Sidenote: Position of Scylacium.]
I. The Scylacium or Scolacium of Roman times, the city of Cassiodorus,
is not to be looked for at the modern Squillace, but at the place
called Roccella in the Italian military map, which Lenormant and Evans
know as _La Roccelletta del Vescovo di Squillace_.
This place, which is about ten kilometres north-east of modern
Squillace, is on a little hill immediately overhanging the sea, while
Squillace is on a spur of the Apennines three or four miles distant
from the sea. Mr. Evans' chief reasons for identifying Roccella with
Scylacium are (1) its position, 'hanging like a cluster of grapes on
hills not so high as to make the ascent of them a weariness, but high
enough to command a delightful prospect over land and sea.' This
description by Cassiodorus exactly suits Roccella, but does not suit
Squillace, which is at the top of a conical hill, and is reached only
by a very toilsome ascent. 'With its gradual southern and eastern
slope and its freedom from overlooking heights (different in this
respect from Squillace),' says Mr. Evans, 'Roccella was emphatically,
as Cassiodorus describes it, "a city of the sun."'
(2) Its ruins. While no remains of a pre-mediaeval time have been
discovered at Squillace, there is still standing at Roccella the shell
of a splendid basilica, of which Mr. Evans has taken some plans and
sketches, but which seems to have strangely escaped the notice of most
preceding travellers. The total length of this building is 94 paces,
the width of the nave 30, the extreme width of the transept 54. It has
three fine apses at the eastern end, and is built in the form of a
Latin cross. On either side of the nave was an exterior arcade, which
apparently consisted originally of eleven window arches, six of them
not being for the transmission of light. 'Altogether,' says Mr. Evans,
'this church, even in its dilapidated state, is one of the finest
monuments of the kind anywhere existing. We should have to go to
Rome, to Ravenna, or to Thessalonica, to find its parallel; but I
doubt whether, even at any of those places, there is to be seen a
basilica with such fine exterior arcading. It is a great tribute to
the strength of the original fabric that so much should have survived
the repeated shocks of earthquake that have desolated Calabria, and
scarcely left one stone upon another of her ancient cities.'
After a careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of this
basilica, Mr. Evans is disposed to fix its erection somewhere about
the time of the Emperor Justinian.
In addition to this fine building there are at Roccella the ruins of
two smaller late Roman churches, mausolea, and endless foundations of
buildings which must have formed very extensive suburbs.
More important than all, the massive walls of a considerable city can
still be traced for nearly a mile in two parallel lines, with the
transverse wall which unites them. Certainly all these indications
seem to point to the existence at this spot of a great provincial city
of the Empire, and to make Mr. Evans' conjecture more probable than
that of M. Lenormant, who identified the ruins at Roccella with those
of Castra Hannibalis, the seaport of Scylacium. It would seem
probable, if Mr. Evans' theory be correct, that the city may have been
removed to its present site in the early middle ages, in order to
guard it against the incursions of the Saracens.
[Sidenote: The Vivarian Monastery.]
II. As to the situation of the _Vivarian Monastery_ Mr. Evans comes to
nearly the same conclusion as M. Lenormant. Both place it on the
promontory of Squillace (eastward of Staletti), and, as Mr. Evans
observes, 'only such a position can be reconciled, on the one hand,
with the presence of an abundant stream and rich Campagna, on the
other with the neighbourhood of caves and grottoes on the sea-shore.'
But while M. Lenormant places it at a place called Coscia, almost
immediately to the north of and under Staletti, Mr. Evans pleads for
the site now occupied by the Church of S. Maria del Mare, on the cliff
top, very near the sea, and about three kilometres south of Staletti.