The letters announcing the King's judgment in this matter, like all the other extant state-papers of Theodoric, were written by a man who was probably by the fall of Faustus raised a step in the official hierarchy, and who was certainly for the last twenty years of the reign of Theodoric one of the most conspicuous of his Roman officials. This was Cassiodorus, or, to give him his full name, Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, a man, whose life and character require to be described in some detail.
Cassiodorus was sprung from a noble Roman family, which had already given three of its members in lineal succession (all bearing the name Cassiodorus) to the service of the State. His great-grandfather, of "Illustrious" rank, defended Sicily and Calabria from the incursions of the Vandals. His grandsire, a Tribune in the army, was sent by the Emperor Valentinian III. on an important embassy to Attila. His father filled first one and then the other of the two highest financial offices in the State under Odovacar. On the overthrow of that chieftain, he, like Liberius, transferred his services to Theodoric, who employed him as governor first of Sicily, then of Calabria, and finally, about the year 500, conferred upon him the highest dignity of all, that of Prætorian Prefect.
The ancestral possessions of the Cassiodori were situated m that southernmost province, sometimes likened to the toe of Italy, which was then called Bruttii, and is now called Calabria. It was a land rich in cattle, renowned for its cheese and for its aromatic, white Palmatian wine; and veins of gold were said to be in its mountains. Here, in the old Greek city of Scyllacium (Sguillace), "a city perched upon a high hill overlooking the sea, sunny yet fanned by cool Mediterranean breezes, and looking peacefully on the cornfields, the vineyards, and the olive-groves around her", [86] Cassiodorus was born, about the year 480. He was therefore probably some twelve or thirteen years of age when the long strife between Odovacar and Theodoric was ended by the murder scene in the palace at Ravenna.
Footnote 86:[ (return) ] The description is taken from Cassiodorus, Var., xii., i5.
Like all the young Roman nobles who aspired to the honours and emoluments of public life, Cassiodorus studied philosophy and rhetoric, and, according to the standard of the age, a degraded standard, he acquired great proficiency in both lines of study. When his father was made Prætorian Prefect (about the year 500), the young rhetorician received an appointment as Consiliarius, or Assessor in the Prefect's court, at a salary which probably did not exceed forty or fifty pounds. While he was holding this position, it fell to his lot to pronounce a laudatory oration on Theodoric (perhaps on the occasion of one of his visits to Rome), and the eloquence of the young Consiliarius so delighted the King, that he was at once made an "Illustrious" Quæstor, thus receiving what we should call cabinet-rank while he was still considerably under thirty years of age. The Quæstor, as has been said, was the Public Orator of the State. It devolved upon him to reply to the formal harangues in which the ambassadors of foreign nations greeted his master, to answer the petitions of his subjects, and to see that the edicts of the sovereign were expressed in proper terms. The post exactly fitted the intellectual tendencies of Cassiodorus, who was never so happy as when he was wrapping up some commonplace thought in a garment of sonorous but turgid rhetoric; and the simple honesty of his moral nature, simple in its very vanity and honest in its childlike egotism, coupled as it was with real love for his country and loyal zeal for her welfare, endeared him in his turn to Theodoric, with whom he had many "gloriosa colloquia" (as he calls them), conversations in which the young, learned, and eloquent Roman poured forth for his master the stored up wine of generations of philosophers and poets, while the kingly barbarian doubtless unfolded some of the propositions of that more difficult science, the knowledge of men, which he had acquired by long and arduous years of study in the council-chamber, on the mountain-march, and on the battle-field.
We can go at once to the fountain-head for information as to the character of Cassiodorus. When he was promoted, soon after the death of Theodoric, to the rank of Prætorian Prefect, it became his duty, as Quæstor to the young King Athalaric (Theodoric's successor), to inform himself by an official letter of the honour conferred upon him. In writing this letter, he does not deviate from the usual custom of describing the virtues and accomplishments which justify the new minister's promotion. Why indeed should he keep silence on such an occasion? No one could know the good qualities of Cassiodorus so well or so intimately as Cassiodorus himself, and accordingly the Quæstor sets forth, with all the rhetoric of which he had such an endless supply, the virtues and the accomplishments which his observant eye has discovered in himself, the new Prætorian Prefect. Such a course would certainly not be often pursued by a modern statesman, but there is a pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds will be more attractive than our present methods, the "inspired" article in a hired newspaper, or the feigned reluctance to receive a testimonial which, till the receiver suggested it, no one had dreamed of offering.
This then is how Cassiodorus, in 533, describes his past career [87]: "You came (his young sovereign, Athalaric, is supposed to be addressing him) in very early years to the dignity of Quæstor; and mv grandfather's (Theodoric's) wonderful insight into character was never more abundantly proved than in your case, for he found you to be endued with rare conscientiousness, and already ripe in your knowledge of the laws. You were in truth the chief glory of your times, and you won his favour by arts which none could blame, for his mind, by nature anxious in all things, was able to lay aside its cares while you supported the weight of the royal counsels with the strength of your eloquence. In you he had a charming secretary, a rigidly upright judge, a minister to whom avarice was unknown. You never fixed a scandalous tariff for the sale of his benefits; you chose to take your reward in public esteem, not in riches. Therefore it was that this most righteous ruler chose you to be honoured by his glorious friendship, because he saw you to be free from all taint of corrupt vices. How often did he fix your place among his white-haired counsellors; inasmuch as they, by the experience of years, had not come up to the point from which you had started! He found that he could safely praise your excellent disposition, open-handed in bestowing benefits, tightly closed against the vices of avarice.
Footnote 87:[ (return) ] Variæ, ix., 24.
"Thus you passed on to the dignity of Master of the Offices, [88] which you obtained, not by a pecuniary payment, but as a testimony to your character. In that office you were ever ready to help the Quæstors, for when pure eloquence was needed men always resorted to you; and, in fact, when you were at hand and ready to help, there was no accurate division of labour among the various offices of the State. [89] No one could find an occasion to murmur aught against you, although you bore all the unpopularity which accompanies the favour of a prince.