Complete Works of Cassiodorus, Vol. I

ments, he was accumulated with the most copious wealth, which Ibidem. he used for munificence, not abusing it for iniquitous domination: "He even boasted in such abundance of his patrimony that, among other goods, he surpassed Princes in herds of horses, and by giving frequently, he did not incur the envy of his name."

§. 5. Scyllacium, the fatherland of Cassiodorus.

Cassiodorus was born of these most famous parents in Scyllacium modern Squillace, which was then the primary city of the Bruttii; although a writer of no mean standing thinks otherwise, not sufficiently considering the different divisions of the provinces of Italy made by the Romans at different times. Nor perhaps did he weigh the words of Cassiodorus himself, where he paints the most pleasant site of his fatherland with such an elegant pen that he has set down his words here:

Epist. 15. Lib. 12.

"I trust it will be very pleasing to the Reader. Scyllacium, the first of the cities of the Bruttii, is proven to touch us with patriotic affection: a city established above the Adriatic gulf, it hangs upon the hills in the manner of a cluster of grapes; not that it swells with a difficult ascent: but so that it may voluptuously look back upon the green fields and the azure backs of the sea. It watches the rising sun from its very cradles, where the coming day does not send a dawn before it: but as soon as it begins to rise, the brilliance displaying its lamp vibrates. It looks back upon the rejoicing Phoebus the Sun/Apollo, resplendent there with his own clarity of light, so that it itself is thought to be more the fatherland of the sun, the opinion of Rhodes being surpassed. It enjoys clear light: also gifted with a temperate air, it feels sunny winters and cooled summers; and time is passed without any sadness, where hostile seasons are not feared, etc."

§. 6. That Ravenna is not the fatherland of Cassiodorus.

With such exquisite words, by which he beautifully commends the convenience of the site and other advantages of Scyllacium, there would be absolutely nothing left to add: if some writers were not held by a foreign opinion, who call Cassiodorus a Ravennas a native of Ravenna, as if he were born in Ravenna. Var. Lib. 1. Ep. 3. Lib. 11. Ep. 5. & 12. But they will be easily led away from that if they only notice that he celebrated the Bruttii and Lucania as his native soil and fatherland elsewhere, not once in his writings.

§. 7. Whether Cassiodorus was born in the year 479 or 480.

It would certainly be desired that Cassiodorus had applied the same accuracy to designating the time when he was born as he had to the description of his city. The knots of difficulties by which almost all writers who have left records about him are entangled would surely be solved; some of whom, like Augustinus Florentinus and the Reverend Father Angelus à Nuce in his Chronicon Cassinense Chronicle of Monte Cassino, refer his birth to the year of Christ 480. "He dies," they say, "in the year 575 at the age of 95." And Bucelinus: "He rested in the Saint a reference to his monastic life in the year of Christ 575 at the age of 95." To some, as to Sixtus Senensis in the Bibliotheca (in which birth is argued from the time of his death), it pleases that he was born in the year 479. "He dies," he says, "in the year 576, at the age of 97." But Barius, or Cardinal Sirletus in the History of the Bruttii: "He died in the year of Christ 575, at the age of 96." I cannot agree with these opinions, however learned, which I perceive to be in conflict with the letters of Cassiodorus. For there he is praised by Theodoric because, at the very beginning of his reign, namely in the year 493, he had him as his most devoted servant, and he compelled the Sicilians, who were at that time impatient of peace and yoke, to cross over to his side through the victorious persuasion of Cassiodorus.

Var. Lib. 1. Ep. 3.

"For in the very beginning," he says, "of our Empire, when the hearts of the provinces were wandering in fluctuating affairs, and the newness itself allowed the new master to be neglected, you diverted the minds of the suspecting Sicilians from their headlong obstinacy: removing the guilt from them, and subtracting the necessity of vengeance from us. Healthful persuasion achieved what vehement severity could amend. You gained the losses of the province, which it deserved to not know under devotion: where, keeping civil laws in the military march, you judged public and private commodities as an unavaricious arbiter; and neglecting your own census, without envy of gain, you brought back the wealth of morals; excluding either the hearing for complaints or the place for derogations; and from whence silence of patience is scarcely wont to be brought back, the voices of those praising you fought for you." But who would believe that a youth of 13 or 14 years could prove his virtue with so many excellent deeds? What praise, however, would be owed to Cassiodorus if the already cited opinions stood? Add that in the same year, namely 493, he was secretary to Theodoric, in whose name, as Baronius notes, he wrote letters to the Emperor Anastasius by which he requested peace. Shall we therefore consider Cassiodorus to have scarcely attained the first years of adolescence when he was promoted to that duty by Theodoric? Finally, from Ep. 4, L. 1, Var. we understand that before 493, under Odoacer, the predecessor of Theodoric, Cassiodorus had acquired no small glory for himself, whom it is established held the dignities of the Comitiva Privatarum Count of the Private Estates and Sacrarum Largitionum Sacred Largesses/Imperial Treasury at that time. But there is no one who would deny that a 13-year-old youth was unequal to these; of which age Cassiodorus would have been if we agree with the above-mentioned authors. Furthermore, Baronius numbers him among those Senators in the year of Christ 493 whose counsel and work Theodoric used in governing political affairs at the beginning of his reign. Therefore, we must confess that Cassiodorus had then passed the years of adolescence.

§. 8. In what year Cassiodorus was born.

As for the year in which he was born, the other authors who wrote about him have constructed nothing certain. Trithemius indeed says: "He flourished, having more than 95 years, in the year of the Lord 575." But what consistent or stable thing can you gather from this particle "more than"? Baronius and certain others have passed over the matter in silence, because they judged that nothing could be defined about it. The arguments brought forward so far against the first opinion, as well as those which will be said in the series of this history, seem to cause Cassiodorus to have reached about the twenty-third or twenty-fourth year of his age at the beginning of the reign of Theodoric, namely in the year 493. Especially since he confesses that he accomplished great things in the first flower of his age under Odoacer; and Theodoric testifies that he entered his Court immediately as a young man, Odoacer having been extinguished, and administered the burdens of the dignities imposed upon him in a praiseworthy manner. Whence it may be inferred that Cassiodorus was born in Scyllacium in the year of the Lord 469 or 470.

§. 9. The education of Cassiodorus, and the dignities which he held previously under Odoacer.

In the instruction of his tractable childhood, all care was exhibited which befits youths of excellent nobility. To military discipline, in which his greater age was duly informed, were added the ornaments of letters; which, although they might reek of the uncouthness of that most troubled time and of foreign domination: yet in them he gave such proofs of progress, and such signs of genius and erudition, that when Odoacer, King of the Eruli Heruli, holding dominion over all Italy, saw the noble youth, who had attained so much ability and prudence within his youth, he affected him with those honors which were then held to be the most important in the Empire. And