The Letters of Cassiodorus
'Therefore we confirm in their offices[684] the stewards[685],
purveyors[686] of wheat, wine, and cheese, the meat sellers, vintners,
farmers of the revenue derived from granaries and taverns[687], hay
merchants, and general provision dealers[688], who belong to the City
of Rome or the royal residence of Ravenna[689]; also those who hold
public charges of this description along the river banks of Ticinum or
Placentia[690], or in any other places, whom we know to have been
appointed by you, whose judgments we willingly embrace and desire to
hold fast exactly as if they were our own; nor will we allow the
malice of any to prevail against those persons who by your choice have
assumed these public functions. If therefore they acquit themselves to
your satisfaction, they shall hold their office for five years without
fear of disturbance during that period. On account of the present
barrenness of the land you should cause them to fix such prices for
the different kinds of grain as shall seem reasonable to your
Eminence[691].
[Footnote 684: The sentence is so long that Cassiodorus seems to have
forgotten its construction, and these important words are in fact
omitted.]
[Footnote 685: 'Arcarios.']
[Footnote 686: 'Prorogatores.']
[Footnote 687: 'Capitularios horreariorum et tabernariorum.']
[Footnote 688: 'Cellaritas.']
[Footnote 689: 'Mansionem Ravennatem.']
[Footnote 690: 'Ripam Ticinensem vel Placentinam.']
[Footnote 691: Here follows, 'Ut hi quibus commissum est exercere
singulos apparatus de injusto gravamine non querantur,' which I do not
venture to translate, as I am not sure whether it relates to buyers or
sellers.]
'As human ambition requires to be checked by fear of punishment,
anyone who by petitioning or canvassing seeks to obtain the place of
one of these lawfully appointed purveyors shall be visited with a fine
of 30 lbs. of gold[692], to be exacted from him by you. If unable to
pay this fine he shall suffer corporal punishment and be noted as
infamous. Nothing can be considered safe or stable if men are to be
perpetually exposed to the snares of envious competitors like these.
Your Greatness is to bring this law to the knowledge of all men.'
[Footnote 692: L1,200.]
[It is clear that this letter refers to an office greatly coveted, and
one in which there was a possibility of making great gains, but also
one in which, owing to the regulation of prices by the government,
there might be temporary losses; to guard against which it was
considered reasonable that the holder should be guaranteed in his
office for five years.
The office is the supply of the staple articles of food to the King's
household at Rome and Ravenna, and to the garrisons probably of Pavia
and Piacenza and the neighbouring country. Did this right carry with
it an absolute monopoly as far as the other inhabitants of those
places are concerned? This seems probable; but I do not know that we
can positively state it.
The term used, 'Arcarii,' is applied in the Theodosian Code (xii. 6,
14) to the bailiffs by whom the rents on the Imperial domain were
collected. Here it has manifestly altered its meaning.]
29. KING THEODAHAD TO COUNT WINUSIAD.
[Sidenote: An old soldier receives furlough for a visit to the baths
of Bormio.]
'Your noble birth and tried fidelity induced us to commit to you the
government of the City of Ticinum, which you had defended in war: but
now, being deluged with a sudden inundation of muddy gout[693], you
ask leave to resort to the waters of Bormio, which by their drying
influences are of healing power for this malady.
[Footnote 693: 'Limosae podagrae subita inundatione complutus.']
'We permit, nay earnestly encourage, you to undertake this journey;
for we cannot bear that one of our warriors should fall a victim to
the tyranny of this cruel disease, which, like the Barbarians, when it
has once claimed by force hospitality in the owner's body, ever after
defends its right thereto by cruelty. It seeks out all the hollow
places of the system, makes stones out of its moisture, and deposits
them there, destroying all the beautiful arrangements of Nature for
free and easy movement. It loosens what ought to be tight, it
contracts the nerves, and so shortens the limbs that a tall man finds
all the comeliness of his stature taken from him while he is still
unmutilated. It is in truth a living death; and when the excruciating
torment is gone, it leaves an almost worse legacy behind it--inability
to move. Even debtors in the torture chamber have the weights
sometimes removed from their feet; but this cruel malady, when it has
once taken hold of a man, seems never to relinquish possession. A
disease of this kind, bringing with it weakness and helplessness, is
especially terrible to a warrior, who after overcoming the foes that
came against him in battle, finds himself thus struck down by an enemy
within.
'Go then, in Heaven's name, to the healing springs. We cannot bear the
thought that you the warrior should be carried on men's shoulders,
instead of bestriding your war-horse. We have painted all these evils
in somewhat exaggerated style in order to stir you up to seek an early
cure.
'Use then these waters, soothing to the taste, and in the hot bath
able to dry up the gouty humours. God has given us this ally wherewith
to overcome that enemy of the human race; and under its double
influence, within and without, the malady, which ten years of regimen
and endless medicines cannot lessen, is put to flight by remedies
which are in themselves delightful.
'May God grant that this far-famed place may restore your body to
health[694].'
[Footnote 694: The nature-heated springs of Bormio are still resorted
to; and some pedestrian travellers, who have crossed the Stelvio from
Trafoi, have a grateful remembrance of their soothing waters.]
30. KING THEODAHAD TO HONORIUS, PRAEFECT OF THE CITY.
[Sidenote: The elephants in the Via Sacra.]
'We regret to learn from your report that the brazen elephants placed
in the Via Sacra[695] (so called from the many superstitions to which
it was consecrated of old) are falling into ruins.
[Footnote 695: I have not found any other mention of these brazen
elephants. Nardini (Roma Antica i. 295) cites this passage, and
illustrates it by quotations from Suetonius, Pliny, and the Historia
Augusta, showing that it was the custom to erect to Emperors and
Empresses statues of elephants drawing triumphal chariots.]
'This is to be much regretted, that whereas these animals live in the
flesh more than a thousand years, their brazen effigies should be so
soon crumbling away. See therefore that their gaping limbs be
strengthened by iron hooks, and that their drooping bellies be
fortified by masonry placed underneath them.
[Sidenote: Natural history of the elephant.]
'The living elephant, when it is prostrate on the ground, as it often
is when helping men to fell trees, cannot get up again unaided. This
is because it has no joints in its feet; and accordingly you see
numbers of them lying as if dead till men come to help them up again.
Thus this creature, so terrible by its size, is really not equally
endowed by Nature with the tiny ant.
'That the elephant surpasses all other animals in intelligence is
proved by the adoration which it renders to Him whom it understands to
be the Almighty Ruler of all. Moreover it pays to good princes a
homage which it refuses to tyrants.
'It uses its proboscis[696], that nosed hand which Nature has given it
to compensate for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master,
accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always
walks cautiously, mindful of that fatal fall [into the hunter's pit]
which was the beginning of its captivity. At its master's bidding it
exhales its breath, which is said to be a remedy for the human
headache.
[Footnote 696: Cassiodorus calls it 'promuscis.']
'When it comes to water it sucks up in its trunk a vast quantity,
which at the word of command it squirts forth like a shower. If anyone
have treated it with contempt, it pours forth such a stream of dirty
water over him that one would think a river had entered his house. For
this beast has a wonderfully long memory, both of injury and of
kindness. Its eyes are small, but move solemnly. There is a sort of
kingly dignity in its appearance, and while it recognises with
pleasure all that is honourable, it seems to despise scurrilous jests.
Its skin is furrowed by deep channels, like that of the victims of the
foreign disease named after it[697], _elephantiasis_. It is on account
of the impenetrability of this hide that the Persian Kings used the
elephant in war.
[Footnote 697: 'A qua transportaneorum (?) nefanda passio nomen
accepit.']
'It is most desirable that we should preserve the images of these
creatures, and that our citizens should thus be familiarised with the
sight of the denizens of foreign lands. Do not therefore permit them
to perish, since it is for the glory of Rome to collect all specimens
of the process by which the art of workmen hath imitated the
productions of wealthy Nature in all parts of the world.'
[This letter traverses the same ground as Pliny's 'Historia Naturalis'
viii. 1-11, but supplies some new facts. Pliny makes the elephant live
to the age of 200 or even 300 years. Cassiodorus boldly says 'more
than a thousand.' The curious story of the elephant's religion is
given with more detail by Pliny; but he knows nothing of the political
sagacity which enables it to discern between a good king and a tyrant.
Pliny mentions the fact that the elephant's breath is a cure for
headache, but adds, 'especially if he sneeze[698].'
[Footnote 698: Hist. Nat. xxviii. 8.]
Upon the whole, though Cassiodorus had probably read Pliny's
description, his own must be pronounced original.
This marvellous letter is the last that we have, written in the name
of Theodahad.]
31. KING WITIGIS[699] TO ALL THE GOTHS.
[Footnote 699: Spelt 'Vitigis' by Cassiodorus.]
[Sidenote: Elevation of Witigis.]
'Though every advance in station is to be accounted among the good
gifts of the Divinity, especially is the kingly dignity to be looked
upon as coming by His ordinance through Whom kings reign and subjects
obey. Wherefore, with liveliest satisfaction returning thanks to our
Maker Christ, we inform you that our kinsmen[700] the Goths, amid a
fence of circling swords, raising us in ancestral fashion upon a
shield, have by Divine guidance bestowed on us the kingly dignity,
thus making arms the emblem of honour to one who has earned all his
renown in war. For know that not in the corner of a presence-chamber,
but in wide-spreading plains I have been chosen King; and that not the
dainty discourse of flatterers, but the blare of trumpets announced my
elevation, that the Gothic people, roused by the sound to a kindling
of their inborn valour, might once more gaze upon a Soldier King.
[Footnote 700: 'Parentes nostros Gothos.']
'Too long indeed have these brave men, bred up amid the shock of
battle, borne with a Sovereign who was untried in war; too long have
they laboured to uphold his dubious fame, though they might presume
upon their own well-known valour[701]. For it is inevitable that the
character of the ruler should in some degree influence the reputation
of the whole people.
[Footnote 701: 'Ut de ejus fama laboraret quamvis de propria virtute
praesumeret.' I have translated as if 'laboraret' and 'praesumeret'
were in the plural, and even so, find it difficult to get a
satisfactory meaning out of these words.]
'But, as ye have heard, called forth by the dangers of my kindred, I
was ready to undergo with them one common fate; but they would not