Theodoric the Goth

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[Footnote 86: The description is taken from Cassiodorus, Var., xii.,
15.]

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 Praetorian 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" Quaestor,
thus receiving what we should call cabinet-rank while he was still
considerably under thirty years of age. The Quaestor, 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 Praetorian Prefect, it became his duty, as
Quaestor 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 Quaestor 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 Praetorian 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 Quaestor; 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: Variae, 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 Quaestors, 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".

[Footnote 88: The date of Cassiodorus' first promotion to this dignity
is uncertain, but it was probably about 518.]

[Footnote 89: Non enim proprios fines sub te ulla dignitas custodivit.
(Of course there is a certain anachronism in representing a statesman of
the sixth century as using the phrase "division of labour".)]

Your detractors were conquered by the integrity of your life; your
adversaries, bowing to public opinion, were obliged to praise even while
they hated you.

"To the lord of the land you showed yourself a friendly judge and an
intimate minister. When public affairs no longer claimed him, he would
ask you to tell him the stories in which wise men of old have clothed
their maxims, that by his own deeds he might equal the ancient heroes.
The courses of the stars, the ebb and flow of the sea, the marvels of
springing fountains,--nto all these subjects would that most acute
questioner inquire, so that by his diligent investigations into the
nature of things, he seemed to be a philosopher in the purple".

This sketch of the character of the minister throws light incidentally
on that of the monarch who employed him. Of course, as a general rule,
history cannot allow the personages with whom she deals to write their
own testimonials, but in this case there is reason to think that the
self-portraiture of Cassiodorus is accurate in its main outlines, though
our modern taste would have suggested the employment of somewhat less
florid colouring.

One literary service which Cassiodorus rendered to the Ostrogothic
monarchy is thus described by himself, still speaking in his young
king's name and addressing the Roman Senate.[90]

[Footnote 90: Variae ix., 25.]

"He was not satisfied with extolling surviving Kings, from whom their
panegyrist might hope for a reward. He extended his labours to our
remote ancestry, learning from books that which the hoary memories of
our old men scarcely retained. He drew forth from their hiding-place the
Kings of the Goths, hidden by long forgetfulness. He restored the Amals
in all the lustre of their lineage, evidently proving that we have Kings
for our ancestors up to the seventeenth generation. He made the origin
of the Goths part of Roman history, collecting into one wreath the
flowers which had previously been scattered over the wide plains of
literature. Consider, therefore, what love he showed to you (the Senate)
in uttering our praises, while teaching that the nation of your
sovereign has been from ancient time a marvellous people: so that you
who from the days of your ancestors have been truly deemed noble are
also now ruled over by the long-descended progeny of Kings".

These sentences relate to the "Gothic History" of Cassiodorus, which
once existed in twelve books, but is now unfortunately lost. A hasty
abridgment of it, made by an ignorant monk named Jordanes, is all that
now remains. Even this, with its many faults, is a most precious
monument of the early history of the Teutonic invaders of the Empire,
and it is from its pages that much of the information contained in the
previous chapters is drawn. The object of the original statesman-author
in composing his "Gothic History" is plainly stated in the above
sentences. He wishes to heal the wound given to Roman pride by the fact
of the supremacy in Italy of a Gothic lord; and in order to effect this
object he strings together all that he can collect of the Sagas of the
Gothic people, showing the great deeds of the Amal progenitors of
Theodoric, whose lineage he traces back into distant centuries. "It is
true" he seems to say to the Senators of Rome, "that you, who once ruled
the world, are now ruled by an alien; but at least that alien is no
new-comer into greatness. He and his progenitors have been crowned Kings
for centuries. His people, who are quartered among you and claim
one-third of the soil of Italy, are an old, historic people. Their
ancestors fought under the walls of Troy; they defeated Cyrus, King of
Persia; they warred not ingloriously with Perdiccas of Macedonia".

These classical elements of the Gothic history of Cassiodorus (which
rest chiefly on a misunderstanding of the vague and unscientific term
"Scythians") are valueless for the purposes of history; but the old
Gothic Sagas, of which he has evidently also preserved some fragments,
are both interesting and valuable. When a nation has played so important
a part on the theatre of the world as that assigned to the Goths, even
their legendary stories of the past are precious. Whether these early
Amal Kings fought and ruled and migrated as the Sagas represent them to
have done, or not, in any case the belief that these were their
achievements was a part of the intellectual heritage of the Gothic
peoples. The songs to whose lullaby the cradle of a great nation is
rocked are a precious possession to the historian.

The other most important work of Cassiodorus is the collection of
letters called the _Variae,_ in twelve books. This collection contains
all the chief state-papers composed by him during the period (somewhat
more than thirty years) which was covered by his official life. Five
books are devoted to the letters written at the dictation of Theodoric;
two to the _Formulae_ or model-letters addressed to the various
dignitaries of the State on their accession to office; three to the
letters written in the name of Theodoric's immediate successors (his
grandson, daughter, and nephew); and two to those written by Cassiodorus
himself in his own name when he had attained the crowning dignity of
Praetorian Prefect.

I have already made some extracts from this collection of "Various
Epistles" and the reader, from the specimens thus submitted to him, will
have formed some conception of the character of the author's style. That
style is diffuse and turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the
prevailing faults of the sixth century, an age of literary decay, when
the language of Cicero and Virgil was falling into its dotage. There is
much ill-timed display of irrelevant learning, and a grievous absence of
simplicity and directness, in the "Various Epistles". It must be
regarded as a misfortune for Theodoric that his maxims of statesmanship,
which were assuredly full of manly sense and vigour, should have reached
us only in such a shape, diluted with the platitudes and false rhetoric
of a scholar of the decadence. Still, even through all these disguises,
it is easy to discern the genuine patriotism both of the great King and
of his minister, their earnest desire that right, not might, should
determine every case that came before them, their true insight into the
vices and the virtues of each of the two different nations which now
shared Italy between them, their persevering endeavour to keep
_civilitas_ intact, their determination to oppose alike the turbulence
of the Goth and the chicane of the scheming Roman.

As specimens of the rhetoric of Cassiodorus when he is trying his
highest flights, the reader may care to peruse the two following
letters. The first[91] was written to Faustus the Praetorian Prefect, to
complain of his delay in forwarding some cargoes of corn from Calabria
to Rome:

[Footnote 91: Var., i., 35.]

"What are you waiting for?" says Cassiodorus, writing in his master's
name. "Why are your ships not spreading their sails to the breeze? When
the South-wind is blowing and your oarsmen are urging on your vessels,
has the sucking-fish (Echeneis) fastened its bite upon them through the
liquid waves? Or have the shell-fishes of the Indian Sea with similar
power stayed your keels with their lips: those creatures whose quiet
touch is said to hold back, more than the tumultuous elements can
possibly urge forward? The idle bark stands still, though winged with
swelling sails, and has no way on her though the breeze is propitious;
she is fixed without anchors; she is moored without cables, and these
tiny animals pull back, more than all such favouring powers can propel.
Therefore when the subject wave would hasten the vessel's course, it
appears that it stands fixed on the surface of the sea: and in
marvellous style the floating ship is retained immovable, while the
wave is hurried along by countless currents.

"But let us describe the nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the
crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the
touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so
deadened--even through the spear by which it is itself wounded--that
while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed without sense
or motion. I think some such misfortunes must have happened to men who
are unable to move themselves.

"But no. The sucking-fish of these men is their hindering corruption.
The shell-fishes that bite them are their avaricious hearts. The torpedo
that benumbs them is lying guile. With perverted ingenuity they
manufacture delays, that they may seem to have met with a run of
ill-luck.

"Let your Greatness, whom it especially behoves to take thought for such
matters, cause that this be put right by speediest rebuke: lest the
famine, which will otherwise ensue, be deemed to be the child of
negligence rather than of the barrenness of the land".

The occasion of the second letter (Var., x., 30.) was as follows. Some
brazen images of elephants which adorned the Sacred Street of Rome were
falling into ruin, Cassiodorus, writing in the name of one of
Theodoric's successors, to the Prefect of the City, orders that their
gaping limbs should be strengthened by hooks, and their pendulous
bellies should be supported by masonry. He then proceeds to give to the
admiring Prefect some wonderful information as to the natural history
of the elephant. He regrets that the metal effigies should be so soon
destroyed, when the animal which they represent is accustomed to live
more than a thousand years.

"The living elephant" he says, "when it is once prostrate on the ground,
cannot rise unaided, because it has no joints in its feet. Hence when
they are helping men to fell timber, you see numbers of them lying on
the earth till men come and help them to rise. Thus this creature, so
formidable by its size, is really more helpless than the tiny ant. The
elephant, wiser than all other creatures, renders religious adoration to
the Ruler of all: also to good princes, but if a tyrant approach, it
will not pay him the homage which is due only to the virtuous. It uses
its proboscis, that nose-like hand which Nature has given it in
compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master,
accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks
cautiously, remembering that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was
the beginning of its captivity. When requested to do so, it exhales its
breath, which is said to be a remedy for the headache.

"When it comes to water, it sucks up a vast quantity in its trunk, and
then at the word of command squirts it forth like a shower. If any one
have treated its demands with contempt, it pours forth such a stream of
dirty water over him that one would think that a river had entered his
house. For this beast has a wonderfully long memory, both of injury and
of kindness. Its eyes are small but move solemnly, so that there is a
sort of royal majesty in its appearance: and it despises scurrile jests,
while it always looks with pleasure on that which is honourable".

It must be admitted that if the official communications of modern
statesmen thus anxiously combined amusement with instruction, the dull
routine of "I have the honour to inform" and "I beg to remain your
obedient humble servant", would acquire a charm of which it is now
destitute.

I have translated two letters which show the ludicrous side of the
literary character of Cassiodorus. In justice to this honest, if
somewhat pedantic, servant of Theodoric, I will close this sketch of his
character with a state-paper of a better type, and one which
incidentally throws some light on the social condition of Italy under
the Goths.

"THEODORIC to the Illustrious Neudes. (Var., v., 29.)

"We were moved to sympathy by the long petition of Ocer but yet more by
beholding the old hero, bereft of the blessing of sight, inasmuch as the
calamities which we witness make more impression upon us than those of
which we only hear. He, poor man, living on in perpetual darkness, had
to borrow the sight of another to hasten to our presence in order that
he might feel the sweetness of our clemency, though he could not gaze
upon our countenance.

"He complains that Gudila and Oppas (probably two Gothic nobles or a
Gothic chief and his wife) have reduced him to a state of slavery, a
condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he once served in our
army as a free man. We marvel that such a man should be dragged into
bondage who (on account of his infirmity) ought to have been liberated
by a lawful owner. It is a new kind of ostentation to claim the services
of such an one, the sight of whom shocks you, and to call that man a
slave, to whom you ought rather to minister with divine compassion.

"He adds also that all claims of this nature have been already judged
invalid after careful examination by Count Pythias, a man celebrated for
the correctness of his judgments. But now overwhelmed by the weight of
his calamity, he cannot assert his freedom by his own right hand, which
in the strong man is the most effectual advocate of his claims. We,
however, whose peculiar property it is to administer justice
indifferently, whether between men of equal or unequal condition, do by
this present mandate decree, that if, in the judgment of the aforesaid
Pythias, Ocer have proved himself free-born, you shall at once remove
those who are harassing him with their claims, nor shall they dare any
longer to mock at the calamities of others: these people who once
convicted ought to have been covered with shame for their wicked
designs".

[Illustration:]

CHAPTER X.

THE ARIAN LEAGUE.

Political bearings of the Arianism of the German invaders of the
Empire--Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Burgundians--Uprise of the power of
Clovis--His conversion to Christianity--His wars with Gundobad, king of
the Burgundians--With Alaric II., king of the Visigoths--Downfall of the
monarchy of Toulouse--Usurpation of Gesalic--Theodoric governs Spain as
guardian of his grandson Amalaric.

[Illustration:]

The position of Theodoric in relation both to his own subjects and to
the Empire was seriously modified by one fact to which hitherto I have
only alluded casually, the fact that he, like the great majority of the
Teutonic invaders of the Empire, was an adherent of the Arian form of
Christianity. In order to estimate at its true value the bearing of
religion, or at least of religious profession, on politics, at the time
of the fall of the Roman State, we might well look at the condition of
another dominion, founded under the combined influence of martial
spirit and religious zeal, which is now going to pieces under our very
eyes, I mean the Empire of the Ottomans. In the lands which are still
under the sway of the Sultan, religion may not be a great spiritual
force, but it is at any rate a great political lever. When you have said
that a man is a Moslem or a Druse, a member of the Orthodox or of the
Catholic Church, an Armenian or a Protestant, you have almost always
said enough to define his political position. Without the need of
additional information you have already got the elements of his civic
equation, and can say whether he is a loyal subject of the Porte, or
whether he looks to Russia or Greece, to France, Austria, or England as
the sovereign of his future choice. In fact, as has been often pointed
out, in the East at this day "Religion is Nationality".

Very similar to this was the condition of the ancient world at the time
when the general movement of the Northern nations began. The battle with
heathenism was virtually over, Christianity being the unquestioned
conqueror; but the question, which of the many modifications of
Christianity devised by the subtle Hellenic and Oriental intellects
should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debated with
the keenest interest on all the shores of the Mediterranean. So keen
indeed was the interest that it sometimes seems almost to have blinded
the disputants to the fact that the Roman Empire, the greatest political
work that the world has ever seen, was falling in ruins around them.
When we want information about the march of armies and the fall of
States, the chroniclers to whom we turn for guidance, withholding that
which we seek, deluge us with trivial talk about the squabbles of monks
and bishops, about Timothy the Weasel and Peter the Fuller, and a host
of other self-seeking ecclesiastics, to whose names, to whose
characters, and to whose often violent deaths we are profoundly and
absolutely indifferent. But though a feeling of utter weariness comes
over the mind of most readers, while watching the theological sword-play
of the fourth and fifth centuries, the historical student cannot afford
to shut his eyes altogether to the battle of the creeds, which produced
results of such infinite importance to the crystallising process by
which Mediaeval Europe was formed out of the Roman Empire.

As I have just said, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, like almost all the great
Teutonic swarm-leaders, like Alaric the Visigoth, like Gaiseric the
Vandal, like Gundobad the Burgundian, was an Arian. On the other hand,
the Emperors, Zeno, for instance, and Anastasius, and the great majority
of the population of Italy and of the provinces of the Empire, were
Catholic. What was the amount of theological divergence which was
conveyed by these terms Arian and Catholic, or to speak more judicially
(for the Arians averred that they were the true Catholics and that their
opponents were heretics) Arian and Athanasian? As this is not the place
for a disquisition on disputed points of theology, it is sufficient to
say that, while the Athanasian held for truth the whole of the Nicene
Creed, the Arian--at least that type of Arian with whom we are here
concerned--would, in that part which relates to the Son of God, leave
out the words "being of one substance with the Father", and would
substitute for them "being like unto the Father in such manner as the
Scriptures declare". He would also have refused to repeat the words
which assert the Godhead of the Holy Spirit. These were important
differences, but it will be seen at once that they were not so broad as
those which now generally separate "orthodox" from "heterodox"
theologians.

The reasons which led the barbarian invaders of the Empire to accept the
Arian form of Christianity are not yet fully disclosed to us. The cause
could not be an uncultured people's preference for a simple faith, for
the Arian champions were at least as subtle and technical in their
theology as the Athanasian, and often surpassed them in these qualities.
It is possible that some remembrances of the mythology handed down to
them by their fathers made them willing to accept a subordinate Christ,
a spiritualised "Balder the Beautiful", divine yet subject to death,
standing as it were upon the steps of his father's throne, rather than
the dogma, too highly spiritualised for their apprehension, of One God
in Three Persons. But probably the chief cause of the Arianism of the
German invaders was the fact that the Empire itself was to a great
extent Arian when they were in friendly relations with it, and were
accepting both religion and civilisation at its hands, in the middle
years of the fourth century.

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