The Letters of Cassiodorus
[11]'A century before the end of the Republic, a city much more
considerable than that which had existed in the past was again
established near the point where the Greek Scylletion had existed.
Among the colonies of Roman citizens founded B.C. 123 on the rogation
of Caius Gracchus, was one sent to this part of Bruttii, under the
name of Colonia Minervia Scolacium, a name parallel to those of
Colonia Neptunia Tarentum and Colonia Junonia Karthago, decided on at
the same time. _Scolacium_ is the form that we meet with in Velleius
Paterculus, and that is found in an extant Latin inscription of the
time of Antoninus Pius. This is the old Latin form of the name of the
town. _Scylacium_, which first appears as used by the writers of the
first century of our era, is a purely literary form springing from the
desire to get nearer to the Greek type _Scylletion_.
[Footnote 11: I take the two following paragraphs from Lenormant's La
Grande Grece, pp. 342-3.]
'Scolacium, or Scylacium, a town purely Roman by reason of the origin
of its first colonists, was from its earliest days an important city,
and remained such till the end of the Empire. Pomponius Mela, Strabo,
Pliny, and Ptolemy speak of it as one of the principal cities of
Bruttii. It had for its port Castra Hannibalis. Under Nero its
population was strengthened by a new settlement of veterans as
colonists. The city then took the names of Colonia Minervia Nervia
Augusta Scolacium. We read these names in an inscription discovered in
1762 at 1,800 metres from the modern Squillace, between that city and
the sea--an inscription which mentions the construction of an aqueduct
bringing water to Scolacium, executed 143 A.D. at the cost of the
Emperor Antoninus.'
[Sidenote: Appearance of the city at the time of Cassiodorus.]
For the appearance of this Roman colony in the seventh century of its
existence the reader is referred to the letter of Cassiodorus before
quoted (Var. xii. 15). The picture of the city, 'hanging like a
cluster of grapes upon the hills, basking in the brightness of the sun
all day long, yet cooled by the breezes from the sea, and looking at
her leisure on the labours of the husbandman in the corn-fields, the
vineyards, and the olive-groves around her,' is an attractive one, and
shows that kind of appreciation of the gentler beauties of Nature
which befits a countryman of Virgil.
This picture, however, is not distinctive enough to enable us from it
alone to fix the exact site of the Roman city. Lenormant (pp.
360-370), while carefully distinguishing between the sites of the
Greek Scylletion and the Latin Scolacium, and assigning the former
with much apparent probability to the neighbourhood of the promontory
and the Grotte di Stalletti, has been probably too hasty in his
assertion that the modern city of Squillace incontestably covers the
ground of the Latin Scolacium. Mr. Arthur J. Evans, after making a
much more careful survey of the place and its neighbourhood than the
French archaeologist had leisure for, has come to the conclusion that
in this identification M. Lenormant is entirely wrong, and that the
Roman city was not at Squillace, where there are no remains of earlier
than mediaeval times, but at Roccella del Vescovo, five or six miles
from Squillace in a north-easterly direction, where there are such
remains as can only have belonged to a Roman provincial city of the
first rank. For a further discussion of the question the reader is
referred to the Note (and accompanying Map) at the end of this
chapter.
We pass on from considering the place of Cassiodorus' birth to
investigate the date of that event.
[Sidenote: Date of birth.]
(3) The only positive statement that we possess as to the birth-year
of Cassiodorus comes from a very late and somewhat unsatisfactory
source. John Trittheim (or Trithemius), Abbot of the Benedictine
Monastery of Spanheim, who died in 1516, was one of the ecclesiastical
scholars of the Renaissance period, and composed, besides a multitude
of other books, a treatise 'De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis,' in which
is found this notice of Cassiodorus[12]:--
'Claruit temporibus Justini senioris usque ad imperii Justini junioris
paene finem, annos habens aetatis plus quam 95, Anno Domini 575.'
[Footnote 12: The reference is given by Koepke (Die Anfaenge des
Koenigthums, p. 88) as 'De scr. ecc. 212 Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, ed.
Fabricius, p. 58;' by Thorbecke (p. 8) as 'Catalogus seu liber
scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, Coloniae 1546, p. 94.' Franz (p. 4)
quotes from the same edition as Koepke, 'De script. eccl. c. 212 in
Fabricii biblioth. eccl., Hamburgi 1728, iii. p. 58.']
This notice is certainly not one to which we should attach much
importance if it contradicted earlier and trustworthy authorities, or
if there were any internal evidence against it. But if this cannot be
asserted, it is not desirable entirely to discard the assertion of a
scholar who, in the age of the Renaissance and before the havoc
wrought among the monasteries of Germany by the Thirty Years' War, may
easily have had access to some sources which are now no longer
available.
When we examine the information which is thus given us, we find it
certainly somewhat vague. 'Cassiodorus was illustrious' (no doubt as a
writer, since it is 'ecclesiastici scriptores' of whom Trittheim is
speaking) 'in the time of Justin the Elder [518-527] down nearly to
the end of the reign of Justin the Younger [565-578], attaining to
more than 95 years of age in the year of our Lord 575.' But on
reflection we see that the meaning must be that Cassiodorus died in
575 (which agrees well with the words 'paene finem imperii Justini
junioris'), and that when he died he was some way on in his 96th year,
or as we say colloquially 'ninety-five off.' The marvel of his
attaining such an age is no doubt the reason for inserting the 'plus
quam,' to show that he did not die immediately after his 95th
birthday. If this notice be trustworthy, therefore, we may place the
birth of Cassiodorus in 479 or 480.
Now upon examining all the facts in our possession as to his career as
a statesman and an author, and especially our latest acquired
information[13], we find that they do in a remarkable manner agree
with Trittheim's date, while we have no positive statement by any
author early or late which really conflicts with it.
[Footnote 13: The Anecdoton Holderi.]
The only shadow of an argument that has been advanced for a different
and earlier date is so thin that it is difficult to state without
confuting it. In some editions of the works of Cassiodorus there
appears a very short anonymous tract on the method of determining
Easter, called 'Computus Paschalis,' and composed in 562. In the
'Orthographia,' which was undoubtedly written by Cassiodorus at the
age of 93, and which contains a list of his previously published
works, no mention is made of this 'Computus.' It must therefore, say
the supporters of the theory, have been written after he was 93. He
must have been at least 94 in 562, and the year of his birth must be
put back at least to 468. In this argument there are two absolutely
worthless links. There is no evidence to show that the 'Computus
Paschalis' came from the pen of Cassiodorus at all, but much reason to
think that Pithoeus, the editor who first published it under his name,
was mistaken in doing so. And if it were his, a little memorandum like
this--only two pages long, and with no literary pretension
whatever--we may almost say with certainty would _not_ be included by
the veteran author in the enumeration of his theological works
prefixed to his 'Orthographia.'
The reason why a theory founded on such an absurdly weak basis has
held its ground at all, has probably been that it buttressed up
another obvious fallacy. A whole school of biographers of Cassiodorus
and commentators on his works has persisted, in spite of the plainest
evidence of his letters, in identifying him with his father, who bore
office under Odovacar (476-493). To do this it was necessary to get
rid of the date 480 for the birth of Cassiodorus Senator, and to throw
back that event as far as possible. And yet, not even by pushing it
back to 468, do they make it reasonably probable that a person, who
was only a child of eight years old at Odovacar's accession, could in
the course of his short reign (the last four years of which were
filled by his struggle with Theodoric) have held the various high
offices which were really held during that reign by the father of
Senator.
We assume therefore with some confidence the year 480 as the
approximate date of the birth of our author; and while we observe that
this date fits well with those which the course of history induces us
to assign to his ancestors in the three preceding generations[14], we
also note with interest that it was, as nearly as we can ascertain,
the year of the birth of two of the most distinguished contemporaries
of Cassiodorus--Boethius and Benedict.
[Footnote 14: Cassiodorus the First, born about 390; the Second, about
420; the Third, about 450.]
[Sidenote: Education of Cassiodorus.]
Of the training and education of the young Senator we can only speak
from their evident results as displayed in the 'Variae,' to which the
reader is accordingly referred. It may be remarked, however, that
though he evidently received the usual instruction in philosophy and
rhetoric which was given to a young Roman noble aspiring to employment
in the Civil Service, there are some indications that the bent of his
own genius was towards Natural History, strange and often laughable as
are the facts or fictions which this taste of his has caused him to
accumulate.
[Sidenote: Consiliarius to his father.]
In the year 500[15], when Senator had just attained the age of twenty,
his father, as we have already seen, received from Theodoric the high
office of Praetorian Praefect. As a General might make an
_Aide-de-camp_ of his son, so the Praefect conferred upon the young
Senator the post of _Consiliarius_, or Assessor in his Court[16]. The
Consiliarius[17] had been in the time of the Republic an experienced
jurist who sat beside the Praetor or the Consul (who might be a man
quite unversed in the law) and advised him as to his judgments. From
the time of Severus onwards he became a paid functionary of the Court,
receiving a salary which varied from 12 to 72 solidi (L7 to L43). At
the time which we are now describing it was customary for the Judge to
choose his Consiliarius from among the ranks of young jurists who had
just completed their studies. The great legal school of Berytus
especially furnished a large number of Consiliarii to the Roman
Governors. In order to prevent an officer in this position from
obtaining an undue influence over the mind of his principal, the
latter was forbidden by law to keep a Consiliarius, who was a native
of the Province in which he was administering justice, more than four
months in his employ[18]. This provision, of course, would not apply
when the young Assessor, as in the case of Cassiodorus, came with his
father from a distant Province: and in such a case, if the Magistrate
died during his year of office, by a special enactment the
fairly-earned pay of the Assessor was protected from unjust demands on
the part of the Exchequer[19]. The functions thus exercised by Senator
in his father's court at Rome, and the title which he bore, were
somewhat similar to those which Procopius held in the camp of
Belisarius, but doubtless required a more thorough legal training. In
our own system, if we could imagine the Judge's Marshal invested with
the responsibilities of a Registrar of the Court, we should perhaps
get a pretty fair idea of the position and duties of a Roman
Consiliarius[20].