Theodoric the Goth

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[Footnote 127: The passage of the "Anonymus Valesii" which describes
these events is so corrupt that it is hardly possible to make sense of
it.]

When tidings of these events were brought to Verona by the Grand
Chamberlain Triwan (or Trigguilla) who, as an Arian, was suspected of
favouring the Jews, and when the Hebrews came themselves to invoke the
justice of the King, Theodoric's righteous indignation was kindled
against these flagrant violations of _civilitas_. It was not, indeed,
the first time that his intervention had been claimed on behalf of the
persecuted children of Israel. At Milan and at Genoa they had already
appealed to him against the vexations of their neighbours, and at Rome
the mob, excited by some idle story of harsh punishments inflicted by
the Jews on their Christian servants, had burned their synagogue in the
Trastevere to the ground. The protection claimed had always been freely
conceded. Theodoric, while expressing or permitting Cassiodorus to
express his pious wonder that a race which wilfully shut itself out from
the eternal rest of Heaven should care for quietness on earth, was
strong in declaring that for the sake of _civilitas_ justice was to be
secured even for the wanderers from the right religious path, and that
no one should be forced to believe in Christianity against his will. Nor
was this willingness to protect the Jews from popular fanaticism
peculiar to Theodoric. Always, so long as the Goths, either the Western
or Eastern branch, remained Arian, the Jews found favour in their eyes,
and Jacob had rest under the shadow of the sons of Odin. Now, therefore,
the king sent an edict addressed to Eutharic and Bishop Peter, ordaining
that a pecuniary contribution should be levied on all the Christian
citizens of Ravenna, out of which the synagogues should be rebuilt, and
that those who were not able to pay their share of this contribution
should be flogged through the streets, the crier going behind them and
in a loud voice proclaiming their offence. The order was doubtless
obeyed, but from that day there was a secret spirit of rebellion in the
hearts of the Roman citizens of Ravenna.

From this time onward occasions of difference between Theodoric and his
Roman subjects were frequently arising. For some reason which is not
explained to us, he ordered the Catholic church of St. Stephen in the
suburbs of Verona to be destroyed. Then came suspicion, the child of
rancour. An order was put forth forbidding the inhabitants of Roman
origin to wear any arms, and this prohibition extended even to
pocket-knives. In the excited state of men's minds earth and heaven
seemed to them to be full of portents..There were earthquakes; there was
a comet with a fiery tail which blazed for fifteen days; a poor Gothic
woman lay down under a portico near Theodoric's palace at Ravenna and
gave birth (so we are assured) to four dragons, two of which, having one
head between them, were captured, while the other two, sailing away
eastward through the clouds, were seen to fall headlong into the sea.

More important than these old wives' fables was the changed attitude and
the wavering loyalty of the Roman Senate. From the remarks made in an
earlier chapter,[128] it will be clear that a conscientious Roman
citizen might truly feel that he owed a divided allegiance to the
Ostrogoth, his ruler _de facto_, and to the Augustus at Constantinople,
his sovereign _de jure_. Through the years of religious schism this
conflict of duties had slumbered, but now, with the enthusiastic
reconciliation between the see of Rome and the throne of Constantinople,
it awoke; and in that age when, as has been already said, religion was
nationality, an orthodox Eastern emperor seemed a much more fitting
object of homage than an Arian Italian king.

[Footnote 128: See p. 155.]

There were two men, united by the ties of kindred, who seemed marked out
by character and position as the leaders of a patriotic party in the
Senate, if such a party could be formed. These men were Boethius and his
father-in-law Symmachus, both Roman nobles of the great and ancient
Anician _gens_. Boethius, whose name we have already met with as the
skilful mechanic who was requested to construct a water-clock and a
sun-dial for the king of the Burgundians, was a man of great and varied
accomplishments--philosopher, theologian, musician, and mathematician.
He had translated thirty books of Aristotle into Latin for the benefit
of his countrymen; his treatise on Music was for many centuries the
authoritative exposition of the science of harmony. He had held the high
honour of the consulship in 510; twelve years later he had the yet
higher honour of seeing his two sons, Symmachus and Boethius, though
mere lads, arrayed in the _trabea_ of the consul.

Symmachus the other leader of the patriotic party in the Roman Senate
had memories of illustrious ancestors behind him. A century before,
another Symmachus had been the standard-bearer of the old Pagan party,
and had delivered two great orations in order to prevent the Christian
Emperors from removing the venerable Altar of Victory from the
Senate-house. Now, his descendant and namesake was an equally firm
adherent of Christianity, a friend and counsellor of Popes, a man who
was willing to encounter obloquy and even death in behalf of Nicene
orthodoxy. He had been consul so long ago as in the reign of Odovacar,
he had been an "Illustrious" Prefect of the City under Theodoric; he was
now Patrician and Chief of the Senate (Caput Senatus). The last two
titles conferred honour rather than power; the headship of the Senate
especially being generally held by the oldest, and if not by the oldest,
by the most esteemed and venerated member of that body. Such was
Symmachus, a man full of years and honours, a historian, an orator, and
a generous contributor of some portion of his vast wealth for the
adornment of his native city.

Boethius, left an orphan in childhood, had enjoyed the wise training of
his guardian Symmachus. When he came to man's estate he married that
guardian's daughter Rusticiana. Though there was the difference of a
generation between them, a close friendship united the old and the
middle-aged senators, and the young consuls sprung from this alliance,
who were the hope of their blended lines, bore, as we have seen, the
names of both father and grandfather.

Up to the year 523, Boethius appears to have enjoyed to the full the
favour of Theodoric. From a chapter of his autobiography[129] we learn
that he had already often opposed the ministers of the crown when he
found them to be unjust and rapacious men. "How often" says he, "have I
met the rush of Cunigast, when coming open-mouthed to devour the
substance of the poor! How often have I baffled the all but completed
schemes of injustice prepared by the chamberlain Trigguilla! How often
have I interposed my influence to protect the unhappy men whom the
unpunished avarice of the barbarians was worrying with infinite
calumnies! Paulinus, a man of consular rank, whose wealth the hungry
dogs of the palace had already devoured in fancy, I dragged as it were
out of their very jaws". But all these acts of righteous remonstrance
against official tyranny, though from the names given they seem to have
been chiefly directed against Gothic ministers, had not forfeited for
Boethius the favour of his sovereign. The proof of this is furnished by
the almost unexampled honour conferred upon him--certainly with
Theodoric's consent--by the elevation of his two sons to the consulship.
The exultant father, from his place in the Senate, expressed his thanks
to Theodoric in an oration of panegyric, which is now no longer extant,
but was considered by contemporaries a masterpiece of brilliant
rhetoric.

[Footnote 129: Contained in the "Consolation of Philosophy".]

So far all had gone well with the fortunes of Boethius; but now, perhaps
about the middle of 523, there came a great and calamitous change. We
must revert for a few minutes to the family circumstances of Theodoric,
in order to understand the influences which were embittering his spirit
against his Catholic--that is to say, his Roman--subjects. The year
before, his grandson Segeric, the Burgundian, had been treacherously
assassinated by order of his father, King Sigismund, who had become a
convert to the orthodox creed, and after the death of Theodoric's
daughter had married a Catholic woman of low origin. In the year 523
itself, Thrasamund, king of the Vandals, died and was succeeded by his
cousin Hilderic, son of one of the most ferocious persecutors of the
Catholic Church, but himself a convert to her creed. Notwithstanding an
oath which Hilderic had sworn to his predecessor on his death-bed, never
to use his royal power for the restoration of the churches to the
Catholics, Hilderic had recalled the Bishops of the orthodox party and
was in all things reversing the bitter persecuting policy of his
ancestors, amalafrida, the sister of Theodoric and widow of Thrasamund,
who had been for nearly twenty years queen of the Vandals, passionately
resented this undoing of her dead husband's work and put herself at the
head of a party of insurgents, who called in the aid of the Moorish
barbarians, but who were, notwithstanding that aid, defeated by the
soldiers of Hilderic at Capsa. Amalafrida herself was taken captive and
shut up in prison, probably about the middle of 523.

Thus everywhere the Arian League, of which Theodoric had been the head,
and which had practically given him the hegemony of Teutonic Europe, was
breaking down; and in its collapse disaster and violent death were
coming upon the members of Theodoric's own family. If Eutharic himself,
as seems probable, had died before this time, and was no longer at the
King's side to whisper distrust of the Catholics at every step, and to
put the worst construction on the actions of every patriotic Roman, yet
even Eutharic's death increased the difficulties of Theodoric's
position, and his doubts as to the future fortunes of a dynasty which
would be represented at his death only by a woman and a child. And these
difficulties and doubts bred in him not depression, but an irascible and
suspicious temper, which had hitherto been altogether foreign to his
calm and noble nature.

Such was the state of things at the court of Ravenna when, in the summer
or early autumn of 523, Cyprian, Reporter in the King's Court, accused
the Patrician Albinus of sending letters to the Emperor Justin hostile
to the royal rule of Theodoric. Of the character and history of Albinus,
notwithstanding his eminent station, we know but little. He was not only
Patrician, but Illustris--that is, in modern phraseology, he had held an
office of cabinet-rank. On the occasion of some quarrel between the
factions of the Circus, Theodoric had graciously ordered him to assume
the patronage of the Green Faction, and to conduct the election of a
pantomimic performer for that party. He had also received permission to
erect workshops overlooking the Forum on its northern side, on condition
that his buildings did not in any way interfere with public convenience
or the beauty of the city. Evidently he was a man of wealth and high
position, one of the great nobles of Rome, but perhaps one who, up to
this time, had not taken any very prominent part in public affairs. His
accuser, Cyprian, still apparently a young man, was also a Roman
nobleman. His father had been consul, and he himself held at this time
the post of Referendarius (or, as I have translated it, Reporter) in the
King's Court of Appeal. His ordinary duty was to ascertain from the
suitor what was the nature of his plea, to state it to the king, and
then to draw up the document, which contained the king's judgment. It
was an arduous office to ascertain from the flurried and often trembling
suitor, in the midst of the hubbub of the court, the precise nature of
his complaint, and a responsible one to express the king's judgment,
neither less nor more, in the written decree. There was evidently great
scope for corrupt conduct in both capacities, if the Referendarius was
open to bribes; and in the "Formula", by which these officers were
appointed, some stress is laid on the necessity of their keeping a pure
conscience in the exercise of their functions. Cyprian seems to have
been a man of nimble and subtle intellect, who excelled in his statement
of a case. So well was this done by him, from the two opposite points of
view, that plaintiff and defendant in turn were charmed to hear each his
own version of the case so admirably presented to the king. Of later
years, Theodoric, weary of sitting in state in the crowded hall of
justice, had often tried his cases on horseback. Riding forth into the
forest he had ordered Cyprian to accompany him, and to state in his own
lively and pleasing style the "for" and "against" of the various causes
that came before him on appeal. Even, we are told, when Theodoric was
roused to anger by the manifest injustice of the plea that was thus
presented, he could not help being charmed by the graceful manner in
which the young Referendarius, the temporary asserter of the claim,
brought it under his notice. Thus trained to subtle eloquence, Cyprian
had been recently sent on an embassy to Constantinople, and had there
shown himself in the word-fence a match for the keenest of the Greeks.
Lately returned, as it should seem, from this embassy, he came forward
in the Roman Senate and accused the Patrician Albinus of outstepping the
bounds of loyalty to the Ostrogothic King in the letters which he had
addressed to the Byzantine Emperor.

In this accusation was Cyprian acting the part of an honest man or of a
base informer? The times were difficult: the relations of a Roman
Senator to Emperor and King were, as I have striven to show, intricate
and ill-defined; it was hard for even good men to know on which side
preponderated the obligations of loyalty, of honour, and of patriotism.
On the one hand Cyprian may have been a true and faithful servant of
Theodoric, who had in his embassy at Constantinople discovered the
threads of a treasonable intrigue, and who would not see his master
betrayed even by Romans without denouncing their treason. As a real
patriot he may have seen that the days of purely Roman rule in Italy
were over, that there must be some sort of amalgamation with these new
Teutonic conquerors, who evidently had the empire of the world before
them, that it would be better and happier, and in a certain sense more
truly Roman, for Italy to be ruled by a heroic "King of the Goths and
Romans" than for her to sink into a mere province ruled by exarchs and
logothetes from corrupt and distant Constantinople. This is one possible
view of Cyprian's character and purposes. On the other hand, he may have
been a slippery adventurer, intent on carving out his own fortune by
whatever means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the noblest of
his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition. In his secret heart
he may have cared nothing for the noble old Goth, his master, with whom
he had so often ridden in the pine-wood; nothing, too, for the great
name of Rome, the city in which his father had once sat as consul. Long
accustomed to state both sides of a case with equal dexterity, and
without any belief in either, this nimble-tongued advocate, who had
already found that Greece had nothing to teach him that was new, may
have had in his inmost soul no belief in God, in country, or in duty,
but in Cyprian alone. Both views are possible; we have before us only
the passionate invectives of his foes and the stereotyped commendations
of his virtues penned by his official superiors, and I will not attempt
to decide between them.

When Cyprian brought his charge of disloyalty against Albinus, the
accused Patrician, who was called into the presence of the King, at once
denied the accusation. An angry debate probably followed, in the course
of which Boethius claimed to speak The attention of all men was
naturally fixed upon him, for by the King's favour, the same favour
which in the preceding year had raised his two sons to the consulship,
he was now filling the great place of Master of the Offices.[130]
"False", said Boethius in loud, impassioned tones, "is the accusation of
Cyprian; but whatever Albinus did, I and the whole Senate of Rome, with
one purpose, did the same. The charge is false, O King Theodoric".The
inter-position of Boethius was due to a noble and generous impulse, but
it was not perhaps wise, in view of all that had passed, and without in
any way helping Albinus, it involved Boethius in his ruin. Cyprian, thus
challenged, included the Master of the Offices in his accusation, and
certain persons, not Goths, but Romans and men of senatorial rank,
Opilio (the brother of Cyprian), Basilius, and Gaudentius, came forward
and laid information against Boethius.

[Footnote 130: See p. 150.]

Here the reader will naturally ask, "Of what did these informers accuse
him?" but to that question it is not possible to give a satisfactory
answer. He himself in his meditations on his trial says: "Of what crime
is it that I am accused? I am said to have desired the safety of the
Senate. 'In what way?' you may ask. I am accused of having prevented an
informer from producing certain documents in order to prove the Senate
guilty of high treason. Shall I deny the charge? But I did wish for the
safety of the Senate and shall never cease to wish for it, nor, though
they have abandoned me, can I consider it a crime to have desired the
safety of that venerable order. That posterity may know the truth and
the real sequence of events, I have drawn up a written memorandum
concerning the whole affair. For, as for these forged letters upon which
is founded the accusation against me of having hoped for Roman freedom,
why should I say anything about them? Their falsehood would have been
made manifest, if I could have used the confession of the informers
themselves, which in all such affairs is admitted to have the greatest
weight. As for Roman freedom, what hope is left to us of attaining that?
Would that there were any such hope. Had the King questioned me, I would
have answered in the words Canius, when he was questioned by the Emperor
Caligula as to his complicity in a a conspiracy formed against him. If
I, said he, had known, thou shouldest never have known."

These words, coupled with some bitter statements as to the tainted
character of the informers against him, men oppressed by debt and
accused of peculation, constitute the only statement of his case by
Boethius which is now available. The memorandum so carefully prepared in
the long hours of his imprisonment has not reached posterity. Would that
it might even yet be found in the library of some monastery, or lurking
as a palimpsest under the dull commentary of some mediaeval divine! It
could hardly fail to throw a brilliant, if not uncoloured light on the
politics of Italy in the sixth century. But, trying as we best may to
spell out the truth of the affair from the passionate complaints of the
prisoner, I think we may discern that there had been some
correspondence on political affairs between the Senate and the Emperor
Justin, correspondence which was perfectly regular and proper if the
Emperor was still to them "Dominus Noster" (our Lord and Master), but
which was kept from the knowledge of "the King of the Goths and Romans",
and which, when he heard of it, he was sure to resent as an act of
treachery to himself. That Boethius, the Master of the Offices under
Theodoric, should have connived at this correspondence, naturally
exasperated the master who had so lately heaped favours on this disloyal
servant. But in addition to this he used the power which he wielded as
Master of the Offices, that is, head of the whole Civil Service of
Italy, to prevent some documents which would have compromised the safety
of the Senate from coming to the knowledge of Theodoric. All this was
dangerous and doubtful work, and though we may find it hard to condemn
Boethius, drawn as he was in opposite directions by the claims of
historic patriotism and by those of official duty, we can hardly wonder
that Theodoric, who felt his throne and his dynasty menaced, should have
judged with some severity the minister who had thus betrayed his
confidence.

The political charge against Boethius was blended with one of another
kind, to us almost unintelligible, a charge of sacrilege and necromancy.
At least this seems to be the only possible explanation of the following
words written by him: "My accusers saw that the charge 'of desiring the
safety of the Senate' was no crime but rather a merit; and therefore, in
order to darken it by the mixture of some kind of wickedness, they
falsely declared that ambition for office had led me to pollute my
conscience with sacrilege. But Philosophy had chased from my breast all
desire of worldly greatness, and under the eyes of her who had daily
instilled into my mind the Pythagorean maxim 'Follow God,' there was no
place for sacrilege. Nor was it likely that I should seek the
guardianship of the meanest of spirits when Divine Philosophy had formed
and moulded me into the likeness of God. The friendship of my
father-in-law, the venerable Symmachus, ought alone to have shielded me
from the suspicion of such a crime. But alas! it was my very love for
Philosophy that exposed me to this accusation, and they thought that I
was of kin to sorcerers because I was steeped in philosophic teachings".

The only reasonable explanation that we can offer of these words is that
mediaeval superstition was already beginning to cast her shadow over
Europe, that already great mechanical skill, such as Boethius was
reputed to possess when his king asked him to manufacture the
water-clock and the sun-dial, caused its possessor to be suspected of
unholy familiarity with the Evil One; perhaps also that astronomy, which
was evidently the favourite study of Boethius, was perilously near to
astrology, and that his zeal in its pursuit may have exposed him to some
of the penalties which the Theodosian code itself, the law-book of
Imperial Rome, denounced against "the mathematicians".

This seems to be all that can now be done towards re-writing the lost
indictment under which Boethius was accused. The trial was conducted
with an outrageous disregard of the forms of justice. It took place in
the Senate-house at Rome; Boethius was apparently languishing in prison
at Pavia, where he had been arrested along with Albinus.[131] Thus at a
distance of more than four hundred miles from his accusers and his
judges was the life of this noble Roman, unheard and undefended, sworn
away on obscure and preposterous charges by a process which was the mere
mockery of a trial. He was sentenced to death and the confiscation of
his property; and the judges whose trembling lips pronounced the
monstrous sentence were the very senators whose cause he had tried to
serve. This thought, the remembrance of this base ingratitude, planted
the sharpest sting of all in the breast of the condemned patriot. It is
evident that the Senate themselves were in desperate fear of the newly
awakened wrath of Theodoric, and the fact that they found Boethius
guilty cannot be considered as in any degree increasing the probability
of the truth of the charges made against him. But it does perhaps
somewhat lessen his reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, since it
shows how thoroughly base and worthless was the body for whose sake he
sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate
would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine
Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the
political firmament.

[Footnote 131: Boethius complains thus: "Now, at a distance of nearly
five hundred miles, unheard and undefended, I have been condemned to
death and proscription for my too enthusiastic love to the Senate".
Pavia, where he seems to have been first confined, was, according to the
Antonine Itinerary, 455 Roman miles from the capital.]

Boethius seems to have spent some months in prison after his trial, and
was perhaps transferred from Pavia to "the _ager Calventianus_", a few
miles from Milan. There at any rate he was confined when the messenger
of death sent by Theodoric found him. There is some doubt as to the mode
of execution adopted. One pretty good contemporary authority says that
he was beheaded, but the writer whom I have chiefly followed, who was
almost a contemporary, but a credulous one, says that torture was
applied, that a cord was twisted round his forehead till his eyes
started from their sockets, and that finally in the midst of his
torments he received the _coup de grace_ from a club.

In the interval which elapsed between the condemnation and the death of
this noble man, who died verily as a martyr for the great memories of
Rome, he had time to compose a book which exercised a powerful influence
on many of the most heroic spirits of the Middle Ages. This book, the
well-known, if not now often read, "Consolation of Philosophy", was
translated into English by King Alfred and by Geoffrey Chaucer, was
imitated by Sir Thomas More (whose history in some respects resembles
that of Boethius), and was translated into every tongue and found in
every convent library of mediaeval Europe. There is a great charm, the
charm of sadness, about many of its pages, and it may be considered from
one point of view as the swan's song of the dying Roman world and the
dying Greek philosophy, or from another, as the Book of Job of the new
mediaeval world which was to be born from the death of Rome. For like the
Book of Job, the "Consolation" is chiefly occupied with a discussion of
the eternal mystery why a Righteous and Almighty Ruler of the world
permits bad men to flourish and increase, while the righteous are
crushed beneath their feet: and, as in the Book of Job, so here, the
question is not, probably because it cannot be, fully answered.

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