BOOKS.
MR. HODGKIN'S CASSIODORUS.*
No one in these islands has so good a right as Mr. Hodgkin to concern himself with Cassiodorus in any shape. How well he has worked at him and his age we have seen in the last two volumes of Italy and her Invaders. It is from the Variae of Cassiodorus that we get our inner knowledge of the reign of the great Theodoric, a reign whose chronology and external events have to be put together from such singularly meagre sources. We instinctively put Theodoric and Cassiodorus together ; we instinctively think of Cassiodorus as the minister of Theodoric, and even of Theodoric as the king who lives for us chiefly in the pages of his minister. And the instinct is a just one. Yet we must not forget that Cassiodorus was the minister of Theodoric - only daring the latter part of his reign, and that he went on being a minister and writing his Variae a good while after the reign of Theodoric had come to an'end. It is important fully to grasp the relation between the two, because some lovers of novelty and paradox have tried to depreciate the great Goth by making out his merits to be the merits of his minister only. Yet a king cannot do everything with his own hands, and, where kings govern as well as reign, foolish kings do not often choose wise ministers, though they sometimes keep on the wise ministers whom they have had the good luck to inherit from their predecessors. The mere difference in the age of the two men alone shows that Cassiodorus was the minister of Theodoric in the strictest and most etymological meaning of that word. He was not the originator of the King's policy ; he was simply called in to carry on the policy which Theodoric himself had devised and had begun to work. Theodoric was lucky in finding an instrument so well suited for his purpose, a • The Leiters of Cassiodorus ; 6,ing a Conde sed Trafulo'bn of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cas-ioderus Senenr. With ai Introduction by Thomas Hodgkin. Loudon : Henry Fronde. 1886. Roman so well able to be the fellow-worker of the Goth in the I noble, if impossible, scheme of founding an abiding kingdom of Goths and Romans, in which Goth and Roman should each have his place and his work side by side. That was the con- ception of Theodorio, not of the young cowiliarius to his father the Praetorian Prsefect, who, somewhere between the years 500 and 505, won the King's notice by a panegyric oration. He became Qnmstor, Consul (514), Patrician, Master of the Offices only just before the death of Theodoric (526), Praetorian Prasfect not till some years after it (533). He goes on under Athalaric,
Theodahad, and Witigis, writing despatches in their names, and at last he withdraws to his religions retirement in Southern. Italy, in 538 or 539 according to Mr. Hodgkin, that is, a little before the fall of the last King whom he served. There, at his Monastery of Vivarium, by Squillace—Mr. Hodgkin discusses the exact site by the new lights supplied by Mr. Arthur Evans —he lived on till perhaps 575, the ninety-fifth year of his age, given up to literature and devotion, taking no farther share in the affairs of the world, but looking on at some of the greatest events of its history. Let Mr. Hodgkin sum up the great outlines of the life of Cassiodorus :—
" 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 Theo- dodo; he had sat by the cradle of the Ostrogothic monarchy, and mourned over its grave ; had seen the eunuch Narses supreme vice- regent of the Emperor ; had beard 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 Cassio- dorus 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."
Mr. Hodgkin's Introduction to the Variae is, as we might have looked for, done in the best style of the author of Italy and her Invaders. He does not confine himself to the Variae ; he goes through the whole life and works of his author. Perhaps the most interesting part of his examination is where he deals with that work of Cassiodorus which we have not, but which, next to the Variae, we should be best pleased to have. This is his History of the Goths, for which we would gladly give up his theological writings and the Chronicle on which Mommsen is so hard. We can get some notion of the work from the abridg- ment which we have from Jordanis in his Getica ; but we mourn the loss of the history in full. It was doubtless a book which would have to be studied with a good deal of caution, for, as Mr. Hodgkin says, Cassiodorus certainly wrote it with a purpose; but that such a man should write it with such a purpose was a fact of more importance than any fact which might, by dint of that purpose, be turned a little away from strict accuracy. Here was a History of the Goths written by a Roman in the spirit of a patriotic Goth. For Cassiodorus was not a mere hireling, ready to write anything to please his master, ready therefore to pervert history at his bidding. He was not like the Greek translator of Dante, who made Arius displace Mahomet in the Inferno, lest the susceptibilities of his Mussulman " countrymen " should be offended at seeing their prophet put in so awkward a place. Cassiodorns believed in the Goths ; Roman and Catholic as he was, he believed in the system of Theodoric ; he slave to it at last, one would think, altogether against hope. There is something touching in his adherence to the Gothic cause, even after the Imperial reconquest of Italy has begun. It is plain from his later life that he was under no danger from the Imperial side. Justinian would doubtless, as Mr. Hodgkin says, have gladly taken him into his service ; but he left the service of the Gothic King at Ravenna only to betake himself to his retreat at Squillace. Bound by every kind of allegiance to a system of which friendship between Goth and Roman was the corner-stone, he clearly wrote his Gothic History with the intention of recommending the Goths to the goodwill of his Roman countrymen. It was his business to put everything Gothic in the best light, to make the Roman believe that the Goth was not the mere natural enemy, the mere outside bar- barian, that he might fancy him, but that he had his place among historic and honourable nations, alongside the Italian and the Greek. A history written with such an object was doubtless one-sided; but its very one-sidedness was part of its value. This, and the unlucky Chronicle, Cassiodorus wrote while still engaged in public affairs ; after his retirement his writings were largely, but not wholly, theological ; still, even when on secular subjects, like his treatise on Spelling, they were written specially for the improvement of the brotherhood at Squillace.
Cassio ions brings Mr. Hodgkin across Boethius,—so he again spells him ; we had for some time been taught to drop the " h."
He rules, by the way, against the " i " which some wish to thrust into the name of Cassiodoriats. It is wonderful in what strange relations people do come together. In the Trariae the founder of the Frankish power, the Clovis of those whom he conquered, the Chlodovech. or Chlocloteig of his own people, is disguised under the strange form of Liduin. Ludnin asks Theodoric to send him a citharcedns, a player of the Greek cithara,—not the national harpa of the Franks. Cassio- dorus is set to write to Boethius about this international matter. Boethins knew everything, music among the rest; and, according to Mr. Hodgkin, he knew theology also. It is very hard to believe that the Consolatio Philosophies is the work of a Christian ; Alfred clearly saw the difficulty when he deemed it for the edification of his people to give his translation a Christian tone which is certainly not to be found in the original. Yet, if we accept the evidence of the last lights, the Aneedoton Holderi, we must believe that the philosopher and consul was really the writer of those treatises of orthodox theology, which bear his name but which latterly have been held not to be his work. It is purely a matter of evidence ; the inherent difficulty remains the same. Mr. Hodgkin allows that Boethius was anyhow a very philosophical Christian, and that he was really more at home in writing the pagan Consolatio than in defending the Catholic faith. Ranke seems carefully to leave the matter open. In his view Boethins shows no signs of Christianity, but says nothing contrary to Christianity. This of course is meant to apply to the Consolatio ; it does not touch the theological writings. Of the fate of the philosopher, so far as it concerns Theodoric, Mr. Hodgkin has spoken in his greater work ; he here acquits Cassiodorus of any share in the act which, almost alone since the death of Odowakar, throws a shade over the glories of the great Gothic reign.
Not the least valuable part of this Introduction is the chapter which Mr. Hodgkin has given to "The Gradations of Official Rank in the Later Empire." We must remember that what- ever was in the later Empire went on under the Gothic kings. Nothing was abolished, nothing was changed; only one or two Gothic institutions, like that of the Saio, were set up alongside of the Roman ones. What we have in the Notitia Imperil we have in the Variae, only of course things come in a more lively shape in the Variae than they do in the Neat ia ; we better see what kind of people a Praetorian Pt refect and a Master of the Offices really were. John Lydus too, writing at Constantinople, is pressed into the service to explain things at Ravenna ; for official dignities at Constantinople and at Ravenna were still the same. It was a wonderful system even to have grown up under Roman Emperors, yet more wonderful to have gone on untouched under a Gothic king. The Roman civil service is the glorification of purely official rank, of rank derived wholly from the holder's position in the Imperial service.
Never was there so elaborate a system ; everybody's duties, precedence, titles, are all settled in perfect order ; each class of dignities has its own honorary epithet ; Cassiodorus has an appropriate and eloquent formula for the bestowal of every office. And this official array remains official ; it does not develop into a hereditary nobility, like that which grew out of personal service about Teutonic kings. And the whole system goes on alongside of no small survivals of the magistrates of the ancient commonwealth, the commonwealth whose name- respublica in Latin, n-arrEisc in Greek—still lives on. The Senate, the consulship, the patriciate, are still there, and the patriciate alone has changed its nature. The Senate and the consuls are still the Senate and consuls of the commonwealth, utterly over- shadowed by the Emperor and his official host, but capable of action in their old character on any pressing emergency. Nowhere is the whole idea of the Gothic rule of Italy better put forth than where, in the formula for bestowing the consulship, Theodorio, or Cassiodorns for him, explains to the newly appointed magistrate that he is to have all the pleasures of the consular dignity, while the Gothic king takes all the toil.
But in the many matters suggested by Mr. Hodgkin's Intro- duction, we are almost forgetting that it is an Introduction, and
that the substance of the book before us lies in the "condensed translation " of the Variae. The twelve books of Variae, it is to be remembered, are a collection, made by Cassiodorus himself, of his official writings, whether put forth in his own name or in the names of the successive kings whom he served. First come five books of letters, despatches, whatever we please to -call them, written by Cassiodorus in the name of Theodoric, addressed some to foreign kings, some to various officials, some to the whole mass of his subjects, Gothic and Roman. (" Uni- versis Gothic et Romanis," a formula exactly answering to the -" Franci et Angli " of our own Norman kings.) These despatches -set forth the whole policy of the great Goth, foreign and domestic ; they are in fact the history of his time. Then come two books of formulae for the bestowal of all manner of offices, great and small, a collection followed at a humble distance by Teutonic Marculf and others. All is ready to hand in an -eloquent style ; the future king or his minister has only to put in the name of the particular person. Then come three books of despatches of the same kind as those under Theodoric, but written in the names of the kings that came after him, even down to the time when the great war for Italy has already begun. Lastly are two books of letters written by Cassiodorus, not in the name -of any king, but in his own name as Prretorian Prmfect. These .are necessarily later than the time of Theodoric, as Cassiodorus -did not obtain that office till after his death. It is of this great 'collection of official documents that Mr. Hodgkin gives us a -" condensed translation." Now this suggests one or two .questions. How far is a translation, and above all a " con- densed translation," an allowable work ? Is there any one who is likely to want a translation of Cassiodorus P At the first flush of the matter we are tempted to say that the "general reader" will not care for Cassiodorns at all, and that the special scholar will like him better in the original text. And from one .point of view this is undoubtedly true. Bat Cassiodorus being Cassiodorus, there is another side to the question. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries we must be prepared for very -wonderful things in the way of Latin writing. Perhaps no one ever clothed such admirable matter in so detest- -able a style as Ammianns Marcellinus. But when we get on to Cassiodorus, it has become more than a question of style. Fine writing in his day was more than fine writing ; he who would win the praise of eloquence and of rising above the " humble " style was bound, not only to put his thoughts that were to the purpose into the most stilted language possible, but to cram in a crowd of other thoughts, or at least sayings, which were not to the purpose at all. Mr. Hodgkin remarks that the style of Cassiodorus reminds him of the very tallest talk of a modern newspaper ; one might perhaps go a little further, and say that, not only his style but a good deal of his matter, reminds us of the wonderful things that are daily telegraphed from Paris to Printing-House Square. Sometimes indeed the elder writer has the advantage. When he writes in the King's name to announce his own appointment to a great office, he can sing his own praises yet more directly than even a special -correspondent can. Sometimes indeed a yet more cruel com- parison suggests itself. Cassiodorus sometimes reminds one .of a foolish lad in an examination, who thinks it neces- sary to show off all that he knows, whether it is any answer to the question or not, and to throw it into forms of words as far removed as may be from his own natural speech. Cassiodorus undoubtedly knew a great deal, and he was anxious -to show off all that be knew. He was evidently specially fond of natural history, and of remarking physical phenomena of all ...Ends. So he thrusts in his knowledge of this kind at every moment, let it have never so little to do with the matter in hand. Has he to rebuke the Prcepositus Faustus because the ships have not brought the corn that they ought to have brought from Apulia and Calabria P Under the guise of a delicate sarcasm, he goes into the whole manners and customs of the torpedo and the sucking-fish, one of which, he suggests, may have hindered the vessels from sailing. And so with all the rest ; there is hardly a letter of which half at least has nothing to do with the matter in hand ; if there is nothing else, there is at least a good stock of commonplace moralising in grand language. In all this there is no particular blame to Cassio- dorns; it was what his age thought fine. As a rule then most .of the letters in the Variae, certainly all the long ones, might, as a mere matter of business, have with great advantage been enade a great deal shorter. The matter that is thrust in merely to be fine is not necessarily without its value. In any case it illustrates the man and his age, and it often tells us something on incidental points. Still it is a clog to the real matter in hand. Herein comes the true use of Mr. Hodgkin's " condensed translation." It is not a substitute for the original, even in the sense in which other translations may be substituted. Its real value is as an index on a large scale. We find a refer- ence to Cassiodorus in some book that we are reading, or we .remember that something is in Cassiodorns, and we forget whereabouts, or we wish to see whether Cassiodorus says any- thing about a particular matter. The reference on the ordinary index sends us to such a letter in such a book of the Variae. .But what are we to do when we get there ? If all that we are concerned with is the sending of the citharcedus to the Frankish king, must we read through the whole of Cassiodorns' discourse on music before we get to it ? We turn to Mr. Hodgkin's "con- densed translation," that is, his enlarged index, and we see the substance of the letter ; we see what it has really bearing on the matter about which we are in search. We can thus turn to the original, and study either the whole letter or only such parts of it as immediately concern us, as we may feel disposed. In this way we hold that the " condensed translation" has its use even for the advanced and serious student. But whether it was worth the while of a scholar like Mr. Hodgkin to stop in the midst of his great history to give other students of his period this somewhat mechanical help,—that is another ques- tion. After all, perhaps it was worth while. If Mr. Hodgkin had not made the condensed translation, he would most likely not have written the Introduction. And the Introduction, as a thorough and scholar-like monograph, which, as being a mono- graph, gives the writer the opportunity—indeed, makes it his duty—to go more minutely into many points than be was likely to do in his general history, stands in the first rank of such writings.
One or two more casual thoughts. There is a great deal well worth reading by those whom Mr. Hodgkin may stir up to an interest in Cassiodorus and his master, in the first volume of the fourth part of Ranke's Weltgeschichte, and, where one might have less expected to find it, in a small treatise by Hans von Schubert, Die Unterwmfung der Alamannen wider die Franken, Strassburg, 1884. And let all men bear in mind that, of the four names of our author, Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, the fourth is not, as one would be apt to think, a title of office, but is one of his hereditary surnames. He himself uses it alone, and Gregory the Great corresponds with an Abbot Senator, very likely of the same family. That Senator should become -a senator is no more wonderful than if some one among ourselve3 bearing the surname of Baron, Earl, or Duke, were to be raised to one of those ranks in the peerage. And so we thank Mr. Hodgkin for our further introduction to the man who was, as Schubert, boldly bat with a good deal of truth, ventured to put it, at one time of his life the last literary statesman of ancient Rome, and at another the first literary monk of the Middle Ages.
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