The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 14

[Footnote 175: iii. 36, 37.]

'Now the Scriniarii [subordinates of the Magister Officiorum] are made Cancellarii and Logothetes and purveyors of the Imperial table, whereas in old time the Cancellarius was chosen only from the ranks of Augustales and Exceptores who had served with credit. In those days the Judgment Hall [of the Praefect] recognised only two Cancellarii, who received an _aureus_ apiece[176] per day from the Treasury. There was aforetime in the Court of Justice a fence separating the Magistrate from his subordinates, and this fence, being made of long splinters of wood placed diagonally, was called _cancellus_, from its likeness to network, the regular Latin word for a net being ca.s.ses, and the diminutive cancellus[177]. At this latticed barrier then stood two _Cancellarii_, by whom, since no one was allowed to approach the judgment-seat, paper was brought to the members of the staff and needful messages were delivered. But now that the office owing to the number of its holders[178] has fallen into disrepute, and that the Treasury no longer makes a special provision for their maintenance, almost all the hangers-on of the Courts of Law call themselves Cancellarii; and, not only in the capital but in the Provinces, they give themselves this t.i.tle in order that they may be able more effectually to plunder the wealthy.'

[Footnote 176: About twelve shillings.]

[Footnote 177: This derivation from ca.s.ses is, of course, absurd.]

[Footnote 178: Can this be the meaning of [Greek: eis plethos]?]

This description by Lydus, while it aptly ill.u.s.trates Ca.s.siodorus'

exhortations to his Cancellarii to keep their hands clean from bribes, shows how lowly their office was still considered; and indeed, but for his statement that it used to be filled by veteran Augustales, we might almost have doubted whether it is rightly cla.s.sed among the 'Learned Services' at all.

[Sidenote: End of the Militia Literata.]

Now at any rate we leave the ranks of the gentlemen of the Civil Service behind us, and come to the 'Militia Illiterata,' of whom the 'Not.i.tia' enumerates only

[Sidenote: Militia Illiterata: Singularii.]

(13) The _Singularii_, a cla.s.s of men of whose useful services Lydus speaks in terms of high praise, contrasting their modest efficiency with the pompous verbosity[179] of the Magistriani (servants of the Master of the Offices) by whom they were being generally superseded in his day. They travelled through the Provinces, carrying the Praefect's orders, and riding in a post-chaise drawn by a single horse (veredus), from which circ.u.mstance, according to Lydus, they derived their name Singularii[180].

[Footnote 179: [Greek: Kompophakellorremosyne] = Pomp-bundle-wordiness, an Aristophanic word.]

[Footnote 180: De Dignitatibus iii. 7.]

We observe that the letter of Ca.s.siodorus[181] addressed to the retiring chief (Primicerius) of the Singularii informs him that he is promoted to a place among the King's Body-guard (Domestici et Protectores), a suitable reward for one who had not been a member of the 'Learned Services.'

[Footnote 181: Var. xi. 31.]

After the Singularii Lydus mentions the _Mancipes_, the men who were either actually slaves or were at any rate engaged in servile occupations; as, for instance, the bakers at the public bakeries, the _Rationalii_, who distributed the rations to the receivers of the annona[182], the _Applicitarii_ (officers of arrest), and _Clavicularii_ (gaolers), who, as we before heard, obeyed the mandate of the Commentariensis. The Lictors, I think, are not mentioned by him. A corresponding cla.s.s of men would probably be the _Apparitores_, who in the 'Not.i.tia' appear almost exclusively attached to the service of the great Ministers of War[183].

[Footnote 182: This seems a probable explanation of a rather obscure pa.s.sage.]

[Footnote 183: See the following sections of the Not.i.tia: Magister Militum Praesentatis (Oriens v. 74, vi. 77; Occidens v. 281, vi. 93); M.M. per Orientem (Or. vii. 67); M.M. per Thracias (Or. viii. 61); M.M. per Illyric.u.m (Or. ix. 56); Magister Equitum per Gallias (Occ.

vii. 117). The only civil officer who has Apparitores is the Proconsul Achaiae (Oriens xxi. 14).]

Thus, it will be seen, from the well-paid and often highly-connected Princeps, who, no doubt, discussed the business of the court with the Praetorian Praefect on terms of friendly though respectful familiarity, down to the gaoler and the lictor and the lowest of the half-servile _mancipes_, there was a regular gradation of rank, which still preserved, in the staff of the highest court of justice in the land, all the traditions of subordination and discipline which had once characterised the military organisation out of which it originally sprang.

CHAPTER V.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

[Sidenote: Editiones Principes.]

The Ecclesiastical History ('Historia Tripart.i.ta') seems to have been the first of the works of Ca.s.siodorus to attract the notice of printers at the revival of learning. The Editio Princeps of this book (folio) was printed by Johann Schuszler, at Augsburg, in 1472[184].

[Footnote 184: This edition is described by Dibdin (Bibliotheca Spenceriana iii. 244-5).]

The Editio Princeps of the 'Chronicon' is contained in a collection of Chronicles published at Basel in 1529 by Joannes Sichardus (printer, Henricus Petrus). The contribution of Ca.s.siodorus is prefaced by an appropriate Epistle Dedicatory to Sir Thos. More, in which a parallel is suggested between the lives of these two literary statesmen.

Next followed the Editio Princeps of the 'Variae,' published at Augsburg in 1533, by Mariangelus Accurtius.

In 1553, Joannes Cuspinia.n.u.s, a counsellor of the Emperor Maximilian, published at Basel a series of Chronicles with which he interwove the Chronicle of Ca.s.siodorus, and to which he prefixed a short life of our author.

[Sidenote: Edition of Nivellius.]

The Editio Princeps of the collected works of Ca.s.siodorus was published at Paris in 1579 by Sebastia.n.u.s Nivellius; and other editions by the same publisher followed in 1584 and 1589. This edition does not contain the Tripart.i.te History, the Exposition of the Psalter, or the 'Complexiones' on the Epistles. Some notes, not without merit, are added, which were compiled in 1578 by 'Gulielmus Fornerius, Parisiensis, Regius apud Aurelianenses Consiliarius et Antecessor.' The annotator says[185] that these notes had gradually acc.u.mulated on the margin of his copy of Ca.s.siodorus, an author who had been a favourite of his from youth, and whom he had often quoted in his forensic speeches.

[Footnote 185: p. 492.]

The edition of Nivellius, which is evidently prepared with a view to aid the historical rather than the theological study of the writings of Ca.s.siodorus, contains also the Gothic history of Jorda.n.u.s (sic), the 'Edictum Theoderici,' the letter of Sidonius describing the Court of Theodoric II _the Visigoth_ (453-466), and the Panegyric of Ennodius on Theodoric the Great. The letter of Sidonius is evidently inserted owing to a confusion between the two Theodorics; and this error has led many later commentators astray. But the reprint of the 'Edictum Theoderici' is of great interest and value, because the MS.

from which it was taken has since disappeared, and none other is known to be in existence. A letter is prefixed to the 'Edictum,' written by Pierre Pithou to Edouard Mole, Dec. 31, 1578, and describing his reasons for sending this doc.u.ment to the publisher who was printing the works of Ca.s.siodorus. At the same time, 'that the West might not have cause to envy the East,' he sent a MS. of the 'Leges Wisigothorum,' with ill.u.s.trative extracts from Isidore and Procopius, which is printed at the end of Nivellius' edition.

I express no opinion about the text of this edition; but it possesses the advantage of an Index to the 'Variae' only, which will be found at the end of the Panegyric of Ennodius. Garet's Index, which is in itself not so full, has the additional disadvantage of being muddled up with the utterly alien matter of the Tripart.i.te History.

In 1588 appeared an edition in 4to. of the works of Ca.s.siodorus (still excluding the Tripart.i.te History and the Biblical Commentaries), published at Paris by Marc Orry. This was republished in 1600 in two volumes 12mo.

The 'Variae' and 'Chronicon' only, in 12mo. were published at Lyons by Jacques Chouet in 1595, and again by Pierre and Jacques Chouet at Geneva in 1609, and by their successors in 1650. These editions contain the notes of Pierre Brosse, Jurisconsult, as well as those of Fornerius.

[Sidenote: Edition of Garet.]

In 1679 appeared, in two volumes folio, the great Rouen edition by Francois Jean Garet (of the Congregation of S. Maur), which has ever since been the standard edition of the works of Ca.s.siodorus. Garet speaks of collating several MSS. of various ages for the text of this edition, especially mentioning 'Codex S. Audoeni' (deficient for Books 5, 6, and 7 of the 'Variae'), 'et antiquissimae membranae S. Remigii Remensis' (containing only the first four books of the same collection). A codex which once belonged to the jurist Cujacius, and which had been collated with Accurtius' text in 1575 by a certain Claude Grulart, seems to have given Garet some valuable readings by means of Grulart's notes, though the codex itself had disappeared.

Garet's edition was re-issued at Venice in 1729, and more recently in Migne's 'Patrologia' (Paris, 1865), of which it forms vols. 69 and 70.

[Sidenote: Forthcoming Edition by Meyer.]

There can be little doubt, however, that all these editions will be rendered obsolete by the new edition which is expected to appear as a volume of the 'Auctores Antiquissimi' in the _Monumenta Germaniae Historica_. The editor is Professor Wilhelm Meyer, of Munich. The work has been for some years announced as near completion, but I have not been able to ascertain how soon it may be expected to appear.

[Sidenote: Supposed fragment of orations.]

Finally, I must not omit to notice the fragments of an oration published by Baudi de Vesme in the Transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin (1846). Those fragments, which were found in a palimpsest MS. of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, were first published in 1822 by Angelo Mai, who was then disposed to attribute them to Symmachus (the elder), and to a.s.sign them to the early part of the fifth century. On reflection, however, he came to the conclusion that they were probably the work of Ca.s.siodorus, and formed part of a panegyric addressed to Theodoric. This theory appears now to meet with general approval. The style is certainly very similar to that of Ca.s.siodorus; but, as will be inferred from the doubt as to their origin, there is little or nothing in these scanty fragments which adds anything to our knowledge of the history of Theodoric.

[Sidenote: Life by Garet.]

To the literature relating to Ca.s.siodorus the most important contribution till recent times was the life by Garet prefixed to his edition of 1679. I cannot speak of this from a very minute investigation, but it seems to be a creditable performance, the work of one who had carefully studied the 'Variae,' but unfortunately quite misleading as to the whole framework of the life of Ca.s.siodorus, from the confusion which it makes between him and his father, an error which Garet has probably done more than any other author to perpetuate.

[Sidenote: Life by St. Marthe.]

The life by Garet was paraphrased in French by Denys de _Ste. Marthe_ ('Vie de Ca.s.siodore,' Paris, 1695), whose work has enjoyed a reputation to which it was not ent.i.tled on the ground either of originality or accuracy, but which was probably due to the fact that the handy octavo volume written in French was accessible to a wider circle of readers than Garet's unwieldy folio in Latin. A more original performance was that of _Count Buat_ (in the 'Abhandlungen der Kurfurstlichen Bairischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,' Munich, 1763); but this author, though he pointed out the cardinal error of Garet, his confusion between Senator and his father, introduced some further gratuitous entanglements of his own into the family history of the Ca.s.siodori.

[Sidenote: Modern monographs.]

All these works, however, are rendered entirely obsolete by three excellent monographs which have recently been published in Germany on the life and writings of Ca.s.siodorus. These are--

[Sidenote: Thorbecke.]