We have an interesting summary of the Quaestor's duties and privileges from the pen of Cassiodorus himself in the 'Variae' (vi. 5), under the title 'Formula Quaesturae,' and to this document I refer the reader who wishes to complete the picture of the occupations in which the busiest years of the life of Cassiodorus were passed.
Special utility of a Quaestor to Theodoric.
To a ruler in Theodoric's position the acquisition of such a Quaestor as Cassiodorus was a most fortunate event. He himself was doubtless unable to speak or to write Latin with fluency. According to the common story, which passes 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 title 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 Cassiodorus, 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 passages 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 Assessor into the Illustrious Quaestor, one of the great personages of his realm.
Composition of the VARIAE.
The monument of the official life of Cassiodorus 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. Their style.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, analyse 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 Cassiodorus 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 'homologators,' 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 Cassiodorus.'
Lack of humour.
Intellectually one of the chief deficiencies of our author—a deficiency in which perhaps his age and nation participated—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]: The letter about the sucking-fish.'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 shells 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 circumstances 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 shell-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.'
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 transmuted into this wonderful rhapsody about sucking-fishes and torpedoes and shell-fish in the Indian Sea.
Character of Cassiodorus.