The Letters of Cassiodorus

This church is itself of later date than Cassiodorus, and probably formed part of the work of restoration undertaken by Nicephorus Phocas in the Tenth Century; but there are signs of its having formerly joined on to a monastery, and some of the work about it looks as if materials taken from the Cassiodorian edifice had been used in the work of reconstruction. [Sidenote: The Fons Arethusae.] III. The _Fountain of Arethusa_ may possibly, according to Mr. Evans, be identified with the Fontana della Panaghia, a small fountain by the sea-shore at the south end of a little bay under the promontory of S. Gregorio. The so-called Fontana di Cassiodoro, near Coscia, has received its name and its present appearance in modern times, and is much too far from the sea to be the Fountain of Arethusa. CHAPTER II. THE ANECDOTON HOLDERI. A few pages must be devoted to the MS. bearing the somewhat uncouth title of 'Anecdoton Holderi,' because it is the most recently opened source of information as to the life and works of Cassiodorus, and one which, if genuine, settles some questions which have been long and vigorously debated among scholars. My information on the subject is derived from a pamphlet of 79 pages by Hermann Usener, printed at Bonn in 1877, and bearing the title 'Anecdoton Holderi: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in Ostgothischer Zeit.' I am indebted to Mr. Bywater, of Exeter College, Oxford, for my introduction to this pamphlet, which, while strikingly confirming some conclusions which I had come to from my own independent study of the 'Variae,' has been of the greatest possible service to me in studying the lives of Cassiodorus and Boethius. [Sidenote: Description of the MS.] The 'Anecdoton' (which loses its right to that name by Usener's publication of it) was discovered by Alfred Holder in a MS. known as Codex Augiensis, No. CVL, which came from the Monastery of Reichenau and is now in the Grand-Ducal Library at Carlsruhe. The monks of the fertile island of Reichenau (Augia Dives), in the Lake of Constance, were celebrated in the ninth and tenth centuries for their zeal in the collection and transcription of manuscripts. The well-known Codex Augiensis (an uncial MS. of the Greek text of the New Testament, with the Vulgate version in parallel columns) is referred by palaeographers to the ninth century[96]. The Codex Augiensis with which we are now concerned, and which is a copy of the 'Institutiones Humanarum Rerum' of Cassiodorus, is believed to have been written in the next succeeding century. On the last page of this MS. Holder discovered the fragment--not properly belonging to the 'Institutiones'--to which he has given his name, and which is as follows[97]:-- [Footnote 96: See Scrivener, Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 133-4.] [Footnote 97: I have adopted the emendations--most of them the corrections of obvious mistakes--which are suggested by Usener.] [Sidenote: Contents of the Anecdoton Holderi.] 'Excerpta ex libello Cassiodori Senatoris monachi servi Dei, ex-Patricio, ex-Consule Ordinario Quaestore et Magistro Officiorum, quem scripsit ad Rufum Petronium Nicomachum ex-Consule Ordinario Patricium et Magistrum Officiorum. Ordo generis Cassiodororum[98]: qui scriptores exstiterint ex eorum progenie vel ex civibus[99] eruditis. [Footnote 98: In the original, 'Casiodoru.'] [Footnote 99: In the original, 'ex quibus.'] 'Symmachus Patricius et Consul Ordinarius, vir philosophus, qui antiqui Catonis fuit novellus imitator, sed virtutes veterum sanctissima religione transcendit. Dixit sententiam pro allecticiis in Senatu, parentesque suos imitatus historiam quoque Romanam septem libris edidit. 'Boethius dignitatibus summis excelluit. Utraque lingua peritissimus orator fuit. Qui regem Theodorichum in Senatu pro Consulatu filiorum luculenta oratione laudavit. Scripsit librum de Sancta Trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium. Condidit et carmen bucolicum. Sed in opere artis logicae, id est dialecticae, transferendo ac mathematicis disciplinis talis fuit ut antiquos auctores aut aequiperaret aut vinceret. 'Cassiodorus Senator, vir eruditissimus et multis dignitatibus pollens. Juvenis adeo, dum patris Cassiodori Patricii et Praefecti Praetorii Consiliarius fieret et laudes Theodorichi regis Gothorum facundissime recitasset, ab eo Quaestor est factus. Patricius et Consul Ordinarius, postmodum dehinc Magister Officiorum [et praefuisset formulas dictionum, quas in duodecim libris ordinavit et Variarum titulum superposuit] scripsit praecipiente Theodoricho rege historiam Gothicam, originem eorum et loca moresque XII libris annuntians.' This memorandum, for it is hardly more, is a vestige, and the only vestige now remaining, of a short tract by Cassiodorus on the literary history of his family and kinsmen. The 'Excerpta' have been made by some later hand--perhaps that of a monk in the Vivarian convent. To him undoubtedly we owe the words 'monachi servi Dei' as a description of Cassiodorus; probably also the 'ex-Patricio,' which is perhaps an incorrect designation. 'Vir eruditissimus,' in the last paragraph, is probably due to the same hand, as, with all his willingness to do justice to his own good qualities, Cassiodorus would hardly have spoken thus of himself in a work avowedly proceeding from his own pen. The clause which is placed in brackets [et ... superposuit] is probably also due to the copyist, anxious to supply what he deemed the imperfections of his memorandum. In short, it must be admitted that the fragment cannot consist of the very words of Cassiodorus in however abbreviated a form. Still it contains so much that is valuable, and that could hardly have been invented by any writer of a post-Cassiodorian age, that it is well worthy of the careful and, so to speak, microscopical examination to which it has been subjected by Usener. [Sidenote: Date of the fragment.] [Sidenote: Persons to whom addressed.] The work from which these 'Excerpta' are taken was composed, according to Usener, in the year 522. This is proved by the facts that the receiver of the letter is spoken of as Magister Officiorum, a post which he apparently held from Sept. 1, 521, to Sept. 1, 522; and that the Consulship of the two sons of Boethius, which began on Jan. 1, 522, is also referred to. The name of the person to whom the letter is addressed is given as Rufius Petronius Nicomachus. Usener, however, shows good reason for thinking that his final name, the name by which he was known in the consular lists, is omitted, and that his full designation was Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus, Consul in 504, Magister Officiorum (as above stated) in 521-522, and Patrician. He was probably the same Cethegus whom Procopius mentions[100] as Princeps Senatus, and as withdrawing from Rome to Centumcellae in the year 545 because he was accused of treachery to the Imperial cause[101]. [Footnote 100: De Bello Gotthico iii. 13 (p. 328, ed. Bonn).] [Footnote 101: If Usener be right (and he has worked up this point with great care), we can trace the following links in the pedigree of Cethegus (see pp. 6 and 11): Rufius Petronius _Placidus_, Consul 481. | Rufius Petronius Anicius _Probinus_, Consul 489. | Rufius Petronius Nicomachus _Cethegus_, Consul 504, correspondent of Cassiodorus. Probinus and Cethegus are referred to by Ennodius in his letter to Ambrosius and Beatus, otherwise called his Paraenesis (p. 409, ed. Hartel).] [Sidenote: Its object.] The object of the little treatise referred to evidently was to give an account of those members of the family to which Cassiodorus belonged who had distinguished themselves in literature. The words 'Ex genere Cassiodororum' are perhaps a gloss of the transcribers. At least it does not appear that they would correctly describe the descent of Symmachus and Boethius, though they were relations of Cassiodorus, being descended from or allied to the great house of the Aurelii from which he also sprang. Probably several other names may have been noticed in the original treatise, but the only three as to which the 'Anecdoton' informs us are the three as to whom information is most acceptable--Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus himself. [Sidenote: Information as to life of Symmachus.] I. The name of Q. Aurelius Memmius _Symmachus_ was already known to us as that of the friend, guardian, and father-in-law of Boethius, and his fellow-sufferer from the outburst of suspicious rage which disgraced the last years of Theodoric. That he was Consul in 485 (under the dominion of Odovacar), and that he had at the time of his fall attained the honoured position of Father of the Senate[102], we also know from the 'Consular Fasti' and the 'Anonymus Valesii.' This extract tells us that he had attained the rank of Patricius, which may perhaps have been bestowed upon him when he laid down the Consulship. He was 'a philosopher, and a modern imitator of the ancient Cato; but surpassed the virtues of the men of old by [his devotion to] our most holy religion.' This sentence quite accords with all that we hear of the character of Symmachus from our other authorities--the 'Anonymus Valesii,' Procopius, and Boethius. The blending of old Roman gravity and Christian piety in such a man's disposition is happily indicated in the words before us. It would be an interesting commentary upon them if we were to contrast the career of the Christian Symmachus, who suffered in some sense as a martyr for the Nicene Creed under Theodoric, with that of his ancestor the Pagan Symmachus, who, 143 years before, incurred the anger of Gratian by his protests against the removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate House, and the curtailment of the grant to the Vestal Virgins. [Footnote 102: Caput Senati. This, not Caput Senatus, is the form which we find in Anon. Valesii. Usener suggests (p. 32) that Symmachus probably became Caput Senati on the death of Festus, who had held that position from 501 to 506.] The Symmachus with whom we are now concerned was also an orator; and we learn from this extract that he delivered a speech, evidently of some importance, in the Senate, 'pro allecticiis.' There seems much probability in Usener's contention that these 'allecticii' were men who had been 'allecti,' or admitted by co-optation into the Senate during the reign of Odovacar, and whom, on the downfall of that ruler, it had been proposed to strip of their recently acquired dignity--a proposal which seems to have been successfully resisted by Symmachus and his friends. Lastly, we learn that Symmachus, 'in imitation of his ancestors,' put forth a Roman History in seven books. The expression for ancestors (parentes) here used is thought by Usener to refer chiefly to Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (Consul in 394[103]), whose granddaughter married Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus, and was the grandmother of our Symmachus. This Flavianus, who was in his time one of the chief leaders of the heathen party in the Senate, is spoken of in one inscription as 'historicus disertissimus;' and in another, mention is made of the fact that he dedicated his annals to Theodosius. [Footnote 103: See Usener, p. 29. The Consules Ordinarii for that year were Arcadius and Honorius.] Whether the elder Symmachus, the Pagan champion, was a historian as well as an orator is a matter about which there is a good deal of doubt. Jordanes twice quotes 'The History of Symmachus,' once as to