The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Letters of Cassiodorus, trans. by Thomas Hodgkin.

The question how far the letters which now appear in the 'Variae' really reproduce the actual documents originally issued by Cassiodorus is one which has been a good deal discussed by scholars, but with no very definite result. It is, after all, a matter of conjecture; and every student who peruses the following letters is entitled to form his own conjecture—especially as to those marvellous digressions on matters of Natural History, Moral Philosophy, and the like—whether they were veritably included in the original letters that issued from the Royal Secretum, and were carried over Italy by the Cursus Publicus. My own conjecture is, that though they may have been a little amplified and elaborated, substantially they were to be found in those original documents. The age was pedantic and half-educated, and had lost both its poetic inspiration and its faculty of humour; and I fear that these marvellous letters were read by the officials to whom they were addressed with a kind of stolid admiration, provoking neither the smile of amusement nor the shrug of impatience which are their rightful meed.

The reader will observe that in many, in fact most of the letters, which were meant to serve as credentials to ambassadors or commissions to civil servants, no names are inserted, but we have instead only the tantalising formula, 'Illum atque Illum,' which I have generally translated, 'A and B.' This circumstance has also been much commented upon, but without our arriving at any very definite result. All that can be said is, that Cassiodorus must have formed his collection of State-papers either from rough drafts in his own possession, or from copies preserved in the public archives, and that, from whichsoever source he drew, the names in that source had not been preserved: a striking comment on the rhetorical unbusinesslike character of the Royal and Imperial Chanceries of that day, in which words were deemed of more importance than things, and the flowers of speech which were showered upon the performer of some piece of public business were preserved, while the name of the performer was forgotten.

As soon as he had finished the collection of the 'Variae,' the Praefect—again in obedience to the entreaties of his friends—composed a short philosophic treatise on the Nature of the Soul ('De Animâ'). As he said, it seems an absurd thing to treat as a stranger and an unknown quantity the very centre of our being; to seek to understand the height of the air, the extent of the earth, the causes of storms and earthquakes, and the nature of the wandering winds, and yet to leave the faculty, by which we grasp all this knowledge, itself uncomprehended [72]. He therefore sets himself to enquire, in twelve chapters:

6. What are its natural virtues [or powers], given to enable it to hold together the framework of the body?

8. What is its especial seat, since it appears to be in a certain sense diffused over the whole body?

10. Sufficient signs by which we may discern what properties the souls of sinners possess.

11. Similar signs by which we may distinguish the souls of righteous men, since we cannot see them with our bodily eyes.

12. Concerning the Soul's state after death, and how it will be affected by the general resurrection.

The treatise ends with a prayer to Christ to preserve the body in good health, that it may be in tune with the harmony of the soul; to give reason the ascendancy over the flesh; and to keep the mind in happy equipoise, neither so strong as to be puffed up with pride, nor so languid as to fail of its proper powers.

The line of thought indicated by the 'De Animâ' led, in such a country as Italy, at such a time as the Gothic War, to one inevitable end—the cloister. It can have surprised none of the friends of Cassiodorus when the veteran statesman announced his intention of spending the remainder of his days in monastic retirement. He was now sixty years of age [73]; his wife, if he had ever married, was probably by this time dead; and we hear nothing of any children for whose sake he need have remained longer in the world. The Emperor would probably have received him gladly into his service, but Cassiodorus had now done with politics. The dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. That dream was now scattered to the winds. Providence had made it plain that not by this bridge was civilisation to pass over from the Old World to the New. Cassiodorus accepted the decision, and consecrated his old age to religious meditation and to a work even more important than any of his political labours (though one which must be lightly touched on here), the preservation by the pens of monastic copyists of the Christian Scriptures, and of the great works of classical antiquity.

It was to his ancestral Scyllacium that Cassiodorus retired; and here, between the mountains of Aspromonte and the sea, he founded his monastery, or, more accurately, his two monasteries, one for the austere hermit, and the other for the less aspiring coenobite. The former was situated among the 'sweet recesses of Mons Castellius [74],' the latter among the well-watered gardens which took their name from the Vivaria (fish-ponds) that Cassiodorus had constructed among them in connection with the river Pellena [75]. Baths, too, especially intended for the use of the sick, had been prepared on the banks of the stream [76]. Here in monastic simplicity, but not without comfort, Cassiodorus ordained that his monks should dwell. The Rule of the order—in so far as it had a written Rule—was drawn from the writings of Cassian, the great founder of Western Monachism, who had died about a century before the Vivarian monastery was founded. In commending the writings of Cassian to the study of his monks, Cassiodorus warns them against the bias shown in them towards the Semi-Pelagian heresy, and desires them to choose the good in those treatises and to refuse the evil. Whatever the reason may have been, it seems clear that Cassiodorus did not make the Rule of Benedict the law of his new monastery; and indeed, strange as the omission may appear, there is, I believe, no allusion to that great contemporary Saint, the 'Father of Monks,' in the whole of his writings.

Though the founder and patron of these two monasteries, it seems probable that Cassiodorus never formally assumed the office of Abbot in either of them [77]. He had probably still some duties to perform as a large landholder in Bruttii; but besides these he had also work to do for 'his monks' (as he affectionately called them)—work of a literary and educational kind—which perhaps made it undesirable that he should be burdened with the petty daily routine of an Abbot's duties. Some years before, he had endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus [78] to found a School of Theology and Christian Literature at Rome, in imitation of the schools of Alexandria and Nisibis [79]. The clash of arms consequent on the invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment of this scheme; but the aged statesman now determined to devote the remainder of his days to the accomplishment of the same purpose in connection with the Vivarian convent.

In the earliest days of Monasticism men like the hermits of the Thebaid had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrawing from all human voices to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts while still keeping their main ends in view. St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally St. Benedict, in that Rule of his which was to be the code of monastic Christendom for centuries, had sanctified Work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic, bringing together Laborare and Orare in friendly union, and proclaiming anew for the monk as for the untonsured citizen the primal ordinance, 'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread.'

The great merit of Cassiodorus, that which shows his deep insight into the needs of his age and entitles him to the eternal gratitude of Europe, was his determination to utilise the vast leisure of the convent for the preservation of Divine and human learning and for its transmission to after ages. In the miserable circumstances of the times Theology was in danger of becoming brutified and ignorant; the great treasures of Pagan literature were no longer being perpetuated by the slaves who had once acted as librarii to the Greek or Roman noble; and with every movement of the Ostrogothic armies, or of the yet more savage hordes who served under the Imperial standard, with every sacked city and with every ravaged villa, some Codex, it may be such as we should now deem priceless and irreplaceable, was perishing. This being the state of Italy, Cassiodorus resolved to make of his monastery not merely a place for pious meditation, but a theological school and a manufactory for the multiplication of copies, not only of the Scriptures, not only of the Fathers and the commentators on Scripture, but also of the great writers of pagan antiquity. In the chapter [80] which he devotes to the description of the scriptorium of his monastery he describes, with an enthusiasm which must have been contagious, the noble work done there by the antiquarius: 'He may fill his mind with the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord. With his fingers he gives life to men and arms them against the wiles of the devil. So many wounds does Satan receive as the antiquarius copies words of Christ. What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant Provinces. Man multiplies the heavenly words, and by a striking figure—if I may dare so to speak—the three fingers of his hand express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. The fast-travelling reed writes down the holy words, and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Saviour.'

It is true that the passage here quoted refers only to the work of the copyist of the Christian Scriptures, but it could easily be shown from other passages [81] that the literary activity of the monastery was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature.

Cassiodorus then goes on to describe the care which he has taken for the binding of the sacred Codices in covers worthy of the beauty of their contents, following the example of the householder in the parable, who provided wedding garments for all who came to the supper of his son. One pattern volume had been prepared, containing samples of various sorts of binding, that the amanuensis might choose that which pleased him best. Mechanical appliances for the convent.He had moreover provided, to help the nightly toil of the scriptorium, mechanical lamps of some wonderful construction, which appears to have made them self-trimming, and to have ensured their having always a sufficient supply of oil [82]. Sun-dials also for bright days, and water-clocks for cloudy days and the night-season, regulated their labour, and admonished them when it was time to unclose the three fingers, to lay down the reed, and to assemble with their brethren in the chapel of the convent for psalmody and prayer.

Upon the whole, though the idea of using the convent as a place of literary toil and theological training was not absolutely new, Cassiodorus seems certainly entitled to the praise of having first realised it systematically and on an extensive scale. It was entirely in harmony with the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict, if it was not formally ordained in that document. At a very early date in the history of their order, the Benedictines, influenced probably by the example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly intermitted. Thus, instead of accepting the obsolete formula for which some scholars in the last age contended, 'Cassiodorus was a Benedictine,' we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Cassiodorians.

In order to set an example of literary diligence to his monks, and to be able to sympathise with the difficulties of an amanuensis, Cassiodorus himself transcribed the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Epistles [83], no doubt from the translation of Jerome. This is not the place for enlarging on the merits of Cassiodorus as a custodian and transmitter of the sacred text. They were no doubt considerable; and the rules which he gives to his monks, to guide them in the work of transcription, show that he belonged to the Conservative school of critics, and was anxious to guard against hasty emendations of the text, however plausible. Practically, however, his MSS. of the Latin Scriptures, showing the Itala and the Vulgate in parallel columns, seem to have been answerable for some of that confusion between the two versions which to some extent spoiled the text of Jerome, without preserving to us in its purity the interesting translation of the earlier Church.

Besides his labours as a transcriber, Cassiodorus, both as an original author and a compiler, used his pen for the instruction of his fellow-inmates at Vivarium.

(1) He began and slowly completed a Commentary on the Psalms. This very diffuse performance (which occupies more than five hundred closely printed pages in Migne's edition) displays, in the opinion of those who have carefully studied it [84], a large amount of acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers, and was probably looked upon as a marvel of the human intellect by the Vivarian monks, for whose benefit it was composed, and to whom it revealed, in the Psalms which they were daily and nightly intoning, refutations of all the heresies that had ever racked the Church, and the rudiments of all the sciences that flourished in the world. It is impossible now for this or any future age to do aught but lament over so much wasted ingenuity, when we find the author maintaining that the whole of the one hundred and fifty Psalms were written by King David, and that Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun have only a mystical meaning; that the first seventy represent the Old Testament, and the last eighty the New, because we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on the eighth day of the week, and so forth. A closer study of the book might perhaps discover in it some genuine additions to the sum of human knowledge; but it is difficult to repress a murmur at the misdirected industry which has preserved to us the whole of this ponderous futility, while it has allowed the History of the Goths to perish.

(2) The 'Complexiones in Epistolas Apostolorum' (first published by Maffei in 1721, from a MS. discovered by him at Verona) have at least the merit of being far shorter than the Commentary on the Psalms. Perhaps the only points of interest in them, even for theological scholars, are that Cassiodorus evidently attributes the Epistle to the Hebrews without hesitation to the Apostle Paul, and that he notices the celebrated passage concerning the Three Heavenly Witnesses (1 John v. 7) in a way which seems to imply that he found that passage in the text of the Vulgate, though on examination his language is seen to be consistent with the theory that these words are a gloss added by the commentator himself.

(3) In order to supply the want of any full Church History in the Latin tongue, a want which was probably felt not only by his own monks but throughout the Churches of the West, Cassiodorus induced his friend Epiphanius to translate from the Greek the ecclesiastical histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and then himself fused these three narratives into one, the well-known 'Historia Tripartita,' which contains the story of the Church's fortunes from the accession of Constantine to the thirty-second year of the reign of Theodosius II (306-439). The fact that the numerous mistranslations of Epiphanius have passed uncorrected, probably indicates that Cassiodorus' own knowledge of Greek was but slight, and that he depended on his coadjutor entirely for this part of the work. The 'Historia Tripartita' has probably had a larger circulation than any other of its author's works; but Cassiodorus himself thought so little of his share in it, that he does not include it in the list of his writings prefixed to the treatise 'De Orthographiâ.' And, in fact, the inartistic way in which the three narratives are soldered together, rather than recast into one symmetrical and harmonious whole, obliges us to admit that Cassiodorus' work at this book was little more than mechanical, and entitles him to scarcely any other praise than that of industry.

(4) Of a different quality, though still partaking somewhat of the nature of a compilation, was his chief educational treatise, the 'Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum [85].' About the year 543, some three or four years after his retirement from public life, while he was slowly ploughing his way through the Commentary on the Psalms, twenty of which he had already interpreted, he seems to have laid it aside for a time in order to devote himself to this work, which aimed more at instruction than at religious edification. In the outset of this book he describes that unsuccessful attempt of his, to which allusion has already been made, for the establishment of a theological school in Rome, and continues that, 'as the rage of war and the turbulence of strife in the Italian realm [86] had prevented the fulfilment of this desire, he felt himself constrained by Divine charity to write for his monks' behoof these libri introductorii, in which, after the manner of a teacher, he would open to them the series of the books of Holy Scripture, and would give them a compendious acquaintance with secular literature.' As the book is not written for the learned, he undertakes to abstain from 'affectata eloquentia,' and he does in the main keep his promise. The simple, straightforward style of the book, which occasionally rises into real and 'unaffected eloquence' where the subject inspires him to make an appeal to the hearts of his readers, presents a striking and favourable contrast to the obscure and turgid phraseology in which the perverted taste of the times caused him generally to shroud his meaning [87].

In the first part of this treatise (commonly called the 'De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum') Cassiodorus briefly describes the contents of the nine Codices [88] which made up the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, and mentions the names of the chief commentators upon each. After some important cautions as to the preservation of the purity of the sacred text and abstinence from plausible emendations, the author proceeds to enumerate the Christian historians—Eusebius, Orosius, Marcellinus, Prosper, and others [89]; and he then slightly sketches the characters of some of the principal Fathers—Hilary, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. This part of the work contains an interesting allusion to 'Dionysius Monachus, Scytha natione, sed moribus omnino Romanus,' of whom Cassiodorus speaks as a colleague in his literary enterprises. This is the so-called Dionysius Exiguus, who fixed (erroneously, as it now appears) the era of the birth of Christ, and whose system of chronology founded on this event has been accepted by all the nations of Christendom. At the conclusion of this the first part of the treatise we find some general remarks on the nature of the monastic life, and some pictures of Vivarium and its neighbourhood, to which we are indebted for some of the information contained in the preceding pages. The book ends with a prayer, and contains thirty-three chapters, the same number, remarks Cassiodorus (who is addicted to this kind of moralising on numbers) that was reached by the years of the life of Christ on earth.

The second part of the treatise, commonly called 'De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum,' contains so much as the author thought that every monk should be acquainted with concerning the four liberal arts—Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Mathematics—the last of which is divided into the four 'disciplines' of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. As illustrating the relative importance of these sciences (as we call them) as apprehended by Cassiodorus, it is curious to observe that while Geometry and Astronomy occupy only about one page, and Arithmetic and Music two pages each, Logic takes up eighteen pages, Grammar two, and Rhetoric six.

(5) Some other works, chiefly of a grammatical kind [90], which have now perished, together with the exegetical treatises already named, occupied the leisure hours of the old age of Cassiodorus. At length, in the ninety-third year of his age, the veteran statesman, nobleman, and judge crowned his life of useful service by writing for his beloved monks his still extant treatise 'De Orthographiâ [91].' He tells us that the monks suddenly exclaimed, 'What doth it profit us to study either those works which the ancients have composed or those which your Wisdom has caused to be added to the list, if we are altogether ignorant how we ought to write these things, and on the other hand cannot understand and accurately represent in speech the words which we find written?' In other words, 'Give us a treatise on spelling.' The venerable teacher gladly complied with the request, and compiled from twelve grammarians [92] various rules, the observance of which would prevent the student from committing the usual faults in spelling. It is no doubt true [93] that this work is a mere collection of excerpts from other authors, not arranged on any systematic principle. Still, even as such a collection, it does great credit to the industry of a nonagenarian; and it seems to me that there is much in it which a person who was studying the transition of Latin into the Lingua Volgare might peruse with profit. To an epigraphist especially it must be interesting to see what were the mistakes which an imperfectly educated Italian in that age was most likely to commit. The confusion between b and v was evidently a great source of error, and their nice discrimination, to which Cassiodorus devotes four chapters, a very crux of accurate scholarship. We see also from a passage in the 'De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum [94]' that the practice of assimilating the last letter of the prefix in compound words, like illuminatio, irrisio, improbus, though it had been introduced, was as yet hardly universal; and similarly that the monks required to be instructed to write quicquam for euphony, instead of quidquam.

The treatise 'De Orthographiâ' was the last product, as far as we know, of the industrious brain of Cassiodorus. Two years after its composition the aged statesman and scholar, in the ninety-sixth year of his age, entered into his well-earned rest [95]. The death of Cassiodorus occurred (as I believe) in the year 575, three years before the death of the Emperor Justin II, nephew and successor of Justinian. The period covered by his life had been one of vast changes. Born when the Kingdom of Odovacar was only four years old, he had as a young man seen that Kingdom overthrown by the arms of Theodoric; he had sat by the cradle of the Ostrogothic monarchy, and mourned over its grave; had seen the eunuch Narses supreme vicegerent of the Emperor; had heard the avalanche of the Lombard invasion thunder over Italy, and had outlived even the Lombard invader Alboin. Pope Leo, the tamer of Attila and the hero of Chalcedon, had not been dead twenty years when Cassiodorus was born. Pope Gregory the Great, the converter of England, was within fifteen years of his accession to the Pontificate when Cassiodorus died. The first great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches was begun in his boyhood and ended before he had reached old age. He saw the irretrievable ruin of Rome, such as Augustus and Trajan had known her; the extinction of the Roman Senate; the practical abolition of the Consulate; the close of the schools of philosophy at Athens.

Reverting to the line of thought with which this chapter opened, if one were asked to specify any single life which more than another was in contact both with the Ancient World and the Modern, none could be more suitably named than the life of Cassiodorus.

NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SQUILLACE.

I. The Scylacium or Scolacium of Roman times, the city of Cassiodorus, is not to be looked for at the modern Squillace, but at the place called Roccella in the Italian military map, which Lenormant and Evans know as La Roccelletta del Vescovo di Squillace.

This place, which is about ten kilometres north-east of modern Squillace, is on a little hill immediately overhanging the sea, while Squillace is on a spur of the Apennines three or four miles distant from the sea. Mr. Evans' chief reasons for identifying Roccella with Scylacium are (1) its position, 'hanging like a cluster of grapes on hills not so high as to make the ascent of them a weariness, but high enough to command a delightful prospect over land and sea.' This description by Cassiodorus exactly suits Roccella, but does not suit Squillace, which is at the top of a conical hill, and is reached only by a very toilsome ascent. 'With its gradual southern and eastern slope and its freedom from overlooking heights (different in this respect from Squillace),' says Mr. Evans, 'Roccella was emphatically, as Cassiodorus describes it, "a city of the sun."'

(2) Its ruins. While no remains of a pre-mediaeval time have been discovered at Squillace, there is still standing at Roccella the shell of a splendid basilica, of which Mr. Evans has taken some plans and sketches, but which seems to have strangely escaped the notice of most preceding travellers. The total length of this building is 94 paces, the width of the nave 30, the extreme width of the transept 54. It has three fine apses at the eastern end, and is built in the form of a Latin cross. On either side of the nave was an exterior arcade, which apparently consisted originally of eleven window arches, six of them not being for the transmission of light. 'Altogether,' says Mr. Evans, 'this church, even in its dilapidated state, is one of the finest monuments of the kind anywhere existing. We should have to go to Rome, to Ravenna, or to Thessalonica, to find its parallel; but I doubt whether, even at any of those places, there is to be seen a basilica with such fine exterior arcading. It is a great tribute to the strength of the original fabric that so much should have survived the repeated shocks of earthquake that have desolated Calabria, and scarcely left one stone upon another of her ancient cities.'

After a careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of this basilica, Mr. Evans is disposed to fix its erection somewhere about the time of the Emperor Justinian.

In addition to this fine building there are at Roccella the ruins of two smaller late Roman churches, mausolea, and endless foundations of buildings which must have formed very extensive suburbs.

More important than all, the massive walls of a considerable city can still be traced for nearly a mile in two parallel lines, with the transverse wall which unites them. Certainly all these indications seem to point to the existence at this spot of a great provincial city of the Empire, and to make Mr. Evans' conjecture more probable than that of M. Lenormant, who identified the ruins at Roccella with those of Castra Hannibalis, the seaport of Scylacium. It would seem probable, if Mr. Evans' theory be correct, that the city may have been removed to its present site in the early middle ages, in order to guard it against the incursions of the Saracens.

II. As to the situation of the Vivarian Monastery Mr. Evans comes to nearly the same conclusion as M. Lenormant. Both place it on the promontory of Squillace (eastward of Staletti), and, as Mr. Evans observes, 'only such a position can be reconciled, on the one hand, with the presence of an abundant stream and rich Campagna, on the other with the neighbourhood of caves and grottoes on the sea-shore.' But while M. Lenormant places it at a place called Coscia, almost immediately to the north of and under Staletti, Mr. Evans pleads for the site now occupied by the Church of S. Maria del Mare, on the cliff top, very near the sea, and about three kilometres south of Staletti. 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.

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.

'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.

'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.

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. Persons to whom addressed.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].

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.

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.

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.

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 the elevation of the Emperor Maximin, and once as to his death [104]. Usener thinks that the 'Anecdoton Holderi' authorises us henceforward to assign these quotations without doubt to the younger, Christian Symmachus, not to his Pagan ancestor. To me the allusion to parentes (in the plural), whose industry as historians the Symmachus there spoken of imitated, seems to make it at least as probable that the earlier, not the later member of the family composed the history which is here quoted by Jordanes.

NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SQUILLACE.

CHAPTER II.

THE ANECDOTON HOLDERI.