The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 2

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 n.o.ble 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 acc.u.mulate.

[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 a.s.sessor 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 (7 to 43). 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 princ.i.p.al, 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 a.s.sessor, as in the case of Ca.s.siodorus, 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 a.s.sessor 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 t.i.tle 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].

[Footnote 15: Or possibly 501.]

[Footnote 16: This fact, and also the cause of Senator's promotion to the Quaestorship, we learn from the Anecdoton Holderi described in a following chapter.]

[Footnote 17: The terms Adsessor, Consiliarius, [Greek: Paredros], [Greek: Symboulos], seem all to indicate the same office.]

[Footnote 18: Cod. Theod. i. 12. 1.]

[Footnote 19: This seems to be the meaning of Cod. Theod. i. 12. 2.

The gains of the 'filii familias a.s.sessores' were to be protected as if they were 'castrense peculium.']

[Footnote 20: Some points in this description are taken from Bethmann Hollweg, Gerichtsverfa.s.sung der sinkenden Romischen Reichs, pp.

153-158.]

[Sidenote: Panegyric on Theodoric.]

[Sidenote: Appointed Quaestor.]

It was while Ca.s.siodorus was holding this agreeable but not important position, that the opportunity came to him, by his dexterous use of which he sprang at one bound into the foremost ranks of the official hierarchy. On some public occasion it fell to his lot to deliver an oration in praise of Theodoric[21], and he did this with such admirable eloquence--admirable according to the depraved taste of the time--that Theodoric at once bestowed upon the orator, still in the first dawn of manhood[22], the 'Ill.u.s.trious' office of Quaestor, giving him thereby what we should call Cabinet-rank, and placing him among the ten or eleven ministers of the highest cla.s.s[23], by whom, under the King, the fortunes of the Gothic-Roman State were absolutely controlled.

[Footnote 21: 'Ca.s.siodorus Senator ... juvenis adeo, dum patris Ca.s.siodori patricii et praefecti praetorii consiliarius fieret et laudes Theodorichi regis Gothorum facundissime recita.s.set, ab eo quaestor est factus' (Anecdoton Holderi, ap. Usener, p. 4).]

[Footnote 22: He himself says, or rather makes Theodoric's grandson say to him, 'Quem _primaevum_ recipiens ad quaestoris officium, mox reperit [Theodoricus] conscientia praeditum, et legum eruditione maturum' (Var. ix. 24).]

[Footnote 23: At this time the Ill.u.s.tres actually in office would probably be the Praefectus Praetorio Italiae (Ca.s.siodorus the father), the Praefectus Urbis Romae, the two Magistri Militum in Praesenti, the Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi, the Magister Officiorum, the Quaestor, the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, the Comes Rerum Privatarum, and the two Comites Domesticorum Equitum et Peditum.]

[Sidenote: Nature of the Quaestor's office.]

The Quaestor's duty required him to be beyond all other Ministers the mouthpiece of the Sovereign. In the 'Not.i.tia[24]' the matters under his control are concisely stated to be 'Laws which are to be dictated, and Pet.i.tions.'

[Footnote 24: 'Sub dispositione viri ill.u.s.tris Quaestoris

Leges dictandae Preces.

Officium non habet sed adjutores de scriniis quos voluerit.']

To him therefore was a.s.signed the duty (which the British Parliament in its folly a.s.signs to no one) of giving a final revision to the laws which received the Sovereign's signature, and seeing that they were consistent with one another and with previous enactments, and were clothed in fitting language. He replied in the Sovereign's name to the pet.i.tions which were presented to him. He also, as we learn from Ca.s.siodorus, had audience with the amba.s.sadors of foreign powers, to whom he addressed suitable and stately harangues, or through whom he forwarded written replies to the letters which they had brought, but always of course speaking or writing in the name of his master. In the performance of these duties he had chiefly to rely on his own intellectual resources as a trained jurist and rhetorician. The large official staff which waited upon the nod of the other great Ministers of State was absent from his apartments[25]; but for the mere manual work of copying, filing correspondence, and the like, he could summon the needful number of clerks from the four great bureaux (scrinia) which were under the control of the Master of the Offices.

[Footnote 25: Officium non habet.]

We have an interesting summary of the Quaestor's duties and privileges from the pen of Ca.s.siodorus himself in the 'Variae' (vi. 5), under the t.i.tle 'Formula Quaesturae,' and to this doc.u.ment I refer the reader who wishes to complete the picture of the occupations in which the busiest years of the life of Ca.s.siodorus were pa.s.sed.

[Sidenote: Special utility of a Quaestor to Theodoric.]

To a ruler in Theodoric's position the acquisition of such a Quaestor as Ca.s.siodorus was a most fortunate event. He himself was doubtless unable to speak or to write Latin with fluency. According to the common story, which pa.s.ses current on the authority of the 'Anonymus Valesii,' he never could learn to write, and had to 'stencil' his signature. I look upon this story with some suspicion, especially because it is also told of his contemporary, the Emperor Justin; but I have no doubt that such literary education as Theodoric ever received was Greek rather than Latin, being imparted during the ten years of his residence as a hostage at Constantinople. Years of marches and countermarches, of battle and foray, at the head of his Ostrogothic warriors, may well have effaced much of the knowledge thus acquired.

At any rate, when he descended the Julian Alps, close upon forty years of age, and appeared for the first time in Italy to commence his long and terrible duel with Odovacar, it was too late to learn the language of her sons in such fashion that the first sentence spoken by him in the Hall of Audience should not betray him to his new subjects as an alien and a barbarian.

Yet Theodoric was by no means indifferent to the power of well-spoken words, by no means unconcerned as to the opinion which his Latin-speaking subjects held concerning him. He was no Cambyses or Timour, ruling by the sword alone. His proud t.i.tle was 'Gothorum Romanorumque Rex,' and the ideal of his hopes, successfully realised during the greater part of his long and tranquil reign, was to be equally the King of either people. He had been fortunate thus far in his Praetorian Praefects. Liberius, a man of whom history knows too little, had amid general applause steered the vessel of the State for the first seven years of the new reign. The elder Ca.s.siodorus, who had succeeded him, seemed likely to follow the same course. But possibly Theodoric had begun to feel the necessity laid upon all rulers of men, not only to be, but also to seem, anxious for the welfare of their subjects. Possibly some dull, unsympathetic Quaestor had failed to present the generous thoughts of the King in a sufficiently attractive shape to the minds of the people. This much at all events we know, that when the young Consiliarius, high-born, fluent, and learned, poured forth his stream of panegyric on 'Our Lord Theodoric'--a panegyric which, to an extent unusual with these orations, reflected the real feelings of the speaker, and all the finest pa.s.sages of which were the genuine outcome of his own enthusiasm--the great Ostrogoth recognised at once the man whom he was in want of to be the exponent of his thoughts to the people, and by one stroke of wise audacity turned the boyish and comparatively obscure a.s.sessor into the Ill.u.s.trious Quaestor, one of the great personages of his realm.

[Sidenote: Composition of the VARIAE.]

[Sidenote: Their style.]

The monument of the official life of Ca.s.siodorus is the correspondence styled the 'Variae,' of which an abstract is now submitted to the reader. There is no need to say much here, either as to the style or the thoughts of these letters; a perusal of a few pages of the abstract will give a better idea of both than an elaborate description. The style is undoubtedly a bad one, whether it be compared with the great works of Greek and Latin literature or with our own estimate of excellence in speech. Scarcely ever do we find a thought clothed in clear, precise, closely-fitting words, or a metaphor which really corresponds to the abstract idea that is represented by it. We take up sentence after sentence of verbose and flaccid Latin, a.n.a.lyse them with difficulty, and when at last we come to the central thought enshrouded in them, we too often find that it is the merest and most obvious commonplace, a piece of tinsel wrapped in endless folds of tissue paper. Perhaps from one point of view the study of the style of Ca.s.siodorus might prove useful to a writer of English, as indicating the faults which he has in this age most carefully to avoid. Over and over again, when reading newspaper articles full of pompous words borrowed from Latin through French, when wearied with 'velleities' and 'solidarities' and 'altruisms' and 'h.o.m.ologators,' or when vainly endeavouring to discover the real meaning which lies hidden in a jungle of Parliamentary verbiage, I have said to myself, remembering my similar labour upon the 'Variae,'

'How like this is to Ca.s.siodorus.'

[Sidenote: Lack of humour.]

[Sidenote: The letter about the sucking-fish.]

Intellectually one of the chief deficiencies of our author--a deficiency in which perhaps his age and nation partic.i.p.ated--was a lack of humour. It is difficult to think that anyone who possessed a keen sense of humour could have written letters so drolly unsuited to the character of Theodoric, their supposed author, as are some which we find in the 'Variae.' For instance, the King had reason to complain that Faustus, the Praetorian Praefect, was dawdling over the execution of an order which he had received for the shipment of corn from the regions of Calabria and Apulia to Rome. We find the literary Quaestor putting such words as these into the mouth of Theodoric, when reprimanding the lazy official[26]: 'Why is there such great delay in sending your swift ships to traverse the tranquil seas? Though the south wind blows and the rowers are bending to their oars, has the sucking-fish[27] fixed its teeth into the hulls through the liquid waves; or have the sh.e.l.ls of the Indian Sea, whose quiet touch is said to hold so firmly that the angry billows cannot loosen it, with like power fixed their lips into your keels? Idle stands the bark though winged by swelling sails; the wind favours her but she makes no way; she is fixed without an anchor, she is bound without a cable; and these tiny animals hinder more than all such prospering circ.u.mstances can help. Thus, though the loyal wave may be hastening its course, we are informed that the ship stands fixed on the surface of the sea, and by a strange paradox the swimmer [the ship] is made to remain immovable while the wave is hurried along by movements numberless. Or, to describe the nature of another kind of fish, perchance the sailors in the aforesaid ships have grown dull and torpid by the touch of the torpedo, by which such a deadly chill is struck into the right hand of him who attacks it, that even through the spear by which it is itself wounded, it gives a shock which causes the hand of the striker to remain, though still a living substance, senseless and immovable. I think some such misfortunes as these must have happened to men who are unable to move their own bodies. But I know that in their case the echeneis is corruption trading on delays; the bite of the Indian sh.e.l.l-fish is insatiable cupidity; the torpedo is fraudulent pretence.

With perverted ingenuity they manufacture delays that they may seem to have met with a run of ill-luck. Wherefore let your Greatness, whom it specially concerns to look after such men as these, by a speedy rebuke bring them to a better mind. Else the famine which we fear, will be imputed not to the barrenness of the times but to official negligence, whose true child it will manifestly appear.'

[Footnote 26: Var. i. 35.]

[Footnote 27: Echeneis.]

It is not likely that Theodoric ever read a letter like this before affixing to it his (perhaps stencilled) signature. If he did, he must surely have smiled to see his few angry Teutonic words trans.m.u.ted into this wonderful rhapsody about sucking-fishes and torpedoes and sh.e.l.l-fish in the Indian Sea.

[Sidenote: Character of Ca.s.siodorus.]

The French proverb 'Le style c'est l'homme,' is not altogether true as to the character of Ca.s.siodorus. From his inflated and tawdry style we might have expected to find him an untrustworthy friend and an inefficient administrator. This, however, was not the case. As was before said, his character was not heroic; he was, perhaps, inclined to humble himself unduly before mere power and rank, and he had the fault, common to most rhetoricians, of over-estimating the power of words and thinking that a few fluent plat.i.tudes would heal inveterate discords and hide disastrous blunders. But when we have said this we have said the worst. He was, as far as we have any means of judging, a loyal subject, a faithful friend, a strenuous and successful administrator, and an exceptionally far-sighted statesman. His right to this last designation rests upon the part which he bore in the establishment of the Italian Kingdom 'of the Goths and Romans,'

founded by the great Theodoric.

[Sidenote: His work in seconding the policy of Theodoric.]

Theodoric, it must always be remembered, had entered Italy not ostensibly as an invader but as a deliverer. He came in pursuance of a compact with the legitimate Emperor of the New Rome, to deliver the Elder Rome and the land of Italy from the dominion of 'the upstart King of Rugians and Turcilingians[28],' Odovacar. The compact, it is true, was loose and indefinite, and contained within itself the germs of that misunderstanding which, forty-seven years later, was developed into a terrible war. Still, for the present, Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, was also in some undefined way legitimate representative of the Old Roman Empire within the borders of Italy. This double aspect of his rule was ill.u.s.trated by that which (rather than the doubtful Rex Italiae) seems to have been his favourite t.i.tle, 'Gothorum Romanorumque Rex.'

[Footnote 28: Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, lvii.]

[Sidenote: Theodoric's love of _Civilitas_.]

The great need of Italy was peace. After a century of wars and rumours of wars; after Alaric, Attila, and Gaiseric had wasted her fields or sacked her capital; after she had been exhausting her strength in hopeless efforts to preserve the dominion of Gaul, Spain, and Africa; after she had groaned under the exactions of the insolent _foederati_, Roman soldiers only in name, who followed the standards of Ricimer or Odovacar, she needed peace and to be governed with a strong hand, in order to recover some small part of her old material prosperity. These two blessings, peace and a strong government, Theodoric's rule ensured to her. The theory of his government was this, that the two nations should dwell side by side, not fused into one, not subject either to the other, but the Romans labouring at the arts of peace, the Goths wielding for their defence the sword of war. Over all was to be the strong hand of the King of Goths and Romans, repressing the violence of the one nation, correcting the chicanery of the other, and from one and all exacting the strict observance of that which was the object of his daily and nightly cares, CIVILITAS. Of this civilitas--which we may sometimes translate 'good order,' sometimes 'civilisation,'

sometimes 'the character of a law-abiding citizen,' but which no English word or phrase fully expresses--the reader of the following letters will hear, even to weariness. But though we may be tired of the phrase, we ought none the less to remember that the thing was that which Italy stood most in need of, that it was secured for her during forty years by the labours of Theodoric and Ca.s.siodorus, and that happiness, such as she knew not again for many centuries, was the result.

[Sidenote: Foresight of Ca.s.siodorus in aiding this policy.]

But the theory of a warrior caste of Goths and a trading and labouring caste of Romans was not flattering to the national vanity of a people who, though they had lost all relish for fighting, could not forget the great deeds of their forefathers. This was no doubt the weak point of the new State-system, though one cannot say that it is a weakness which need have been fatal if time enough had been given for the working out of the great experiment, and for Roman and Goth to become in Italy, as they did become in Spain, one people. The grounds upon which the praise of far-seeing statesmanship may be claimed for Ca.s.siodorus are, that notwithstanding the bitter taste which it must have had in his mouth, as in the mouth of every educated Roman, he perceived that here was the best medicine for the ills of Italy. All attempts to conjure with the great name of the Roman Empire could only end in subjection to the really alien rule of Byzantium. All attempts to rouse the religious pa.s.sions of the Catholic against the heretical intruders were likely to benefit the Catholic but savage Frank. The cruel sufferings of the Italians at the hands of the Heruli of Belisarius and from the ravages of the Alamannic Brethren are sufficient justification of the soundness of Ca.s.siodorus' view that Theodoric's State-system was the one point of hope for Italy.

[Sidenote: His religious tolerance.]

Allusion has been made in the last paragraph to the religious differences which divided the Goths from the Italians. It is well known that Theodoric was an Arian, but an Arian of the most tolerant type, quite unlike the bitter persecutors who reigned at Toulouse and at Carthage. During the last few years of his reign, indeed, when his mind was perhaps in some degree failing, he was tempted by the persecuting policy of the Emperor Justin into retaliatory measures of persecution towards his Catholic subjects, but as a rule his policy was eminently fair and even-handed towards the professors of the two hostile creeds, and even towards the generally proscribed nation of the Jews. So conspicuous to all the world was his desire to hold the balance perfectly even between the two communions, that it was said of him that he beheaded an orthodox deacon who was singularly dear to him, because he had professed the Arian faith in order to win his favour. But this story, though told by a nearly contemporary writer[29], is, it may be hoped, mere Saga.