Page 203 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Cassiodorus and Senarius

published his collection. The significance of these and other diplomatic
letters to Cassiodorus’ aims, however, is not their political content – the
probable context of the opening letter to Anastasius can only be deduced
on the basis of the chronology of Cassiodorus’ career, which is not at all
explicit – but their literary finesse. The diplomatic correspondence is not
presented in such a way as to offer any sort of comment on the political
affairs of Theoderic’s time, or on the early stages of the Byzantine war
in Italy. Instead, the diplomatic letters exemplify Cassiodorus’ prefatory
remarks on the need for ‘conscious eloquence’ in the service of the state. 7
There is no doubt that the letters to rulers are among those which, for
Cassiodorus, demonstrated the highest of the three styles of composi-
tion he strove to employ, ‘elevated to the greatest height of oratory by
8
exquisite sensibilities’. The diplomatic letters are a demonstration of his
skills as quaestor, for the composition of letters to rulers, like the other
types of letters in the first ten books of the Variae, was the responsibility of
9
the quaestorship. Modern scholars tend to study the diplomatic letters as
documentary evidence from the chancery of the Ostrogothic kings, ex-
amined for slim indications of foreign policy; but in the published Variae,
they appear as Cassiodorus’ own epistles to emperors and kings, to be
perused as the graceful products of his pen.
Diplomatic correspondence in the Variae is distinguished from edicts
and letters of appointment not only by its function but also by
Cassiodorus’ editorial policy. Letters to rulers constitute less than a tenth
of the Variae’s 468 letters, but Cassiodorus’ arrangement of his letters gives
them emphasis commensurate with their importance, not their number.
It has long been noted that the thirty-two diplomatic letters, nineteen to
emperors or empresses in Constantinople and thirteen to western kings,
have pride of place in the collection. 10 Book i opens with a letter to
the emperor Anastasius, and each following book, with the exception
of the formulae and the two books written in Cassiodorus’ own name
as praetorian prefect, also begins with a letter to an emperor or western
king. Books i, ii, and v also close with letters to kings; Book x presents a
variation on this, a series of letters to the emperor and his senior officials.
The placing of the diplomatic letters at the beginning of each book,
and at the end of some, is the most obvious organising principle in the
7
Date of Cass., Variae i, 1: Krautschick, Cassiodor, 50–1. Eloquence: Cass., Variae, Praef ., 8: conscia
facundia.
8
Cass., Variae, Praef ., 16: ad summum apicem disputationis exquisitis sensibus elevatur; Fridh, Terminologie
et formules, 9. The three styles, however, are distinguished not by the social status of the recipients,
but by the addressees’ degree of literacy.
9
Cass., Variae x, 6.6; Mommsen, ‘Ostgothische Studien’, 390.
10
Mommsen, Prooemium to Cass., Variae, xxvii; Hermann Peter, Der Brief in der romischen Literatur
(Leipzig, 1901; repr. Hildersheim, 1965), 209; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, 77–81.
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