Page 200 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

from a number of his correspondents. These various writings convey
few data on current international affairs, yet none the less emphasise,
in different ways, the importance of their authors’ participation in the
political communication which enveloped the wars and truces of the
time. Cassiodorus and Senarius were concerned to exhibit their own so-
cial status and literary skills; references to foreign relations in their writings
display the significance of diplomatic duties only for their own careers.
By this self-presentation, they reveal the extent to which, a century after
the Roman West had begun to be divided among the new kingdoms,
the traditional role of embassies in public life had continued and devel-
oped vigorously in changed political circumstances, and how the duty of
political communication could be exploited in new ways as an indicator
of status with the court milieu.

diplomatic correspondence in the variae
of cassiodorus
Fl. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was a member of the fourth
recorded generation of an aristocratic family which had branches in both
the eastern and western halves of the empire in the mid-fifth century.
His ancestors had perhaps emigrated from the East to Italy during the
reign of Valentinian III. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father
had all held public office at first the imperial, then the royal, courts
of Ravenna and Rome; his father, as prefect of Italy, induced the young
Cassiodorus into public life. Cassiodorus himself held posts at the court of
the Ostrogothic monarchs three times over the course of three decades. At
a young age, in recognition of the literary eloquence he displayed when
delivering a panegyric to Theoderic, Cassiodorus was appointed to the
office of quaestor palatii (c. 506/7–511), a postwhich, as the ruler’s official
spokesman, occupied a very senior position in the royal consistorium.Over
a decade later, he was appointed by the king as magister officiorum (523–7),
the controller of the civil service, infamously succeeding the incarcer-
ated Boethius, and was retained in this post after Theoderic’s death by
his successor and grandson Athalaric. The same king reappointed
Cassiodorus to office five years later, now as praetorian prefect of Italy
(533–7), the chief executive civil minister of the Italian government,
and again Cassiodorus was retained in the same office throughout the
succeeding and troubled rules of Amalasuntha, Theodahad, and Vitigis.
By the end of his public career, Cassiodorus had thus held all three
of the mostsenior civil offices atthe courtof Ravenna. Between his
first and second periods in office, he was appointed sole consul for the

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