Theodoric (43 page)

Despite what, in the story, Cassiodorus seemed to believe, this was not the building that Scipio and Caesar knew, but an Imperial replacement dating from the reign of Diocletian and today known as the Curia.

A reference to the authoress of the Sibylline Prophecies (foretelling the future destiny of Rome), the Oracle of Cumae.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla, successful general and ultra-reactionary politician, became Dictator of Rome in 81
BC
. There followed a reign of terror, which saw several thousand ‘enemies of the state' proscribed and executed. The young Julius Caesar very nearly became one of Sulla's victims, but saved himself by the coolness and courage of his deportment when interrogated.

Liberius implemented a system of parcelling out called ‘thirds'. The term is surely misleading. Given the tiny number of Goths compared to Romans, this could hardly mean that the native Italians were to be deprived of one-third of their land and property. The fact that the final settlement seems to have satisfied Theoderic's followers, without causing undue hardship to their Roman ‘hosts', argues that Liberius pulled off an astonishing coup, squaring the circle of conflicting interests. (See Moorhead's
Theoderic in Italy
,
Chapter 2
.)

One of the charges brought against Pope Symmachus (who seems, like some of his Renaissance successors, to have been as much worldly
politician as spiritual leader) by his opponents, was that he consorted with loose women, especially one who rejoiced in the nickname ‘Conditaria', which translates as ‘highly seasoned', or indeed ‘spicy', as Chadwick renders it in his
Boethius
.

For the sake of dramatic clarity I have telescoped Theoderic's confirmation of Symmachus as Pope, his fiat concerning Church lands, and his decision as to the fate of Laurentius, into a single incident. In fact, final settlement of these matters was not reached till some time after 500.

Displaying a breathtaking combination of inventiveness and lack of scruple, Symmachus produced a formidable battery of forged documents to support his claim:
Synodi sinuessanae gesta
;
Constitutio Silvestri gesta Liberii
;
Gesta de Xysti purgatione
;
Gesta Polychronii
. Anyone interested in their contents will find them admirably summarized in
Chapter 4
of Moorhead's
Theoderic in Italy
.

Our present system of dating from the birth of Christ, devised by Dionysius Exiguus, was only officially adopted in 527, the year after Theoderic's death. However, it's not unreasonable to suppose its periodic use for some time prior to that date. Official acknowledgement of any important change often lags behind a ground-swell of popular usage or opinion; e.g., the adoption in Scotland of Christmas Day as a public holiday, which, for four hundred years following its prohibition as a pagan festival by John Knox, it had not been.

This is the famous Senigallia medallion, named after the town near which a surviving example was discovered in 1894. The medallion has generally been dated to 500 and associated with Theoderic's visit to Rome on the occasion of his
tricennalia
. However, my old tutor Philip Grierson has argued for a date of 509 (see ‘The Date of Theoderic's Gold Medallion',
Hikuin
, 1985).

And, in some cases, still are: the Massimo (Maximus), Colonna and Gaetani families have pedigrees stretching back to the Roman Republic. (The consul Fabius Maximus was famous for adopting ‘Fabian' tactics against Hannibal.)

Like one of those clever cutaway models designed to show the inner workings of the human body or the internal structure of a building, the Colosseum, in its present plundered state, shows clearly the honeycomb of passages under the arena where the animals were caged and then transported to the surface by means of a complex system of lifts and ramps.

The excavated Roman villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily boasts a magnificent series of mosaics, dating from
c
.
AD
300, showing how animals for the Roman Games were captured and transported. There are mounted men driving stags into a circle of nets; men loading elephants onto a galley; a Roman animal-catcher directing Moorish assistants to surround and net a lion; an ox-drawn cart with a shipping-crate containing one of the big cats; etc.

I hold my hands up; the incident's a shameless crib from a scene in the film
Quo Vadis?
.

There is ample evidence that
seditio popularis
(the expression surely needs no translation) at this time caused Theoderic considerable concern. The
Liber pontificalis
paints an alarming picture of fighting between Laurentian and Symmachan mobs (egged on, respectively, by Festus and Probinus, and by Faustus
niger
); of clergy put to the sword, and nuns taken from convents and clubbed; and fighting in the streets of Rome a daily occurrence. Pope Gelasius (492–96) reported that two
successive bishops were murdered in Scyllaeum (Squillace), and the
Fragmentum Laurentianum
uses the expression ‘
bella civilia
' to describe the rioting in Rome. Things got so bad that on 27 August 502 Theoderic wrote to the bishops assembled in Rome to use their influence to curb the prevailing disorder.

Under Theoderic, the administration of Italy continued virtually unchanged from imperial times. There were a few (a very few) deviations from his principle whereby the bureaucracy would be manned by Romans, the army by Goths. Count Colosseus, in charge of Pannonia Sirmiensis with troops under him, Servatus Dux Raetiarum, and one Cyprian, who served Theoderic in a military capacity, were all Romans; while Wilia the
Comes Patrimonii
, Triwila the
Praepositus Sacri Cubilici
, and the senator Arigern, were all Goths. They were, however, exceptions. To a contemporary, unless they lived in the Gothic heartland of north-east Italy with its capital at Ravenna, it would have been difficult to tell that the country was no longer part of the Roman Empire.

Who were these people? Priscian is not specific, but Zachariah of Mytilene (
Historia ecclesiastica
) wrote of one Dominic ‘who had a quarrel with the tyrant [Theoderic] and took refuge with King Justinian'. The reference to Justinian (who was not, of course, emperor in Theoderic's lifetime, but who might loosely be described as ‘king' in his capacity of virtual co-ruler with Justin) means that the event occurred towards the end of Theoderic's reign, when the label ‘tyrant' might be held to have had some justification. Priscian however (as mentioned by Ennodius in
Panegyricus dictus Theoderico
), was writing at the very beginning of the sixth century, when Theoderic's popularity was (with the exception of the Laurentian senators disgruntled by the alienation of Church lands) as yet undimmed. Perhaps it was this senatorial clique (expanded by wishful thinking into a larger and more representative group) that Priscian had in mind.

As elsewhere, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, I've gone in for some telescoping of events – without, I think, compromising essential historical truth. The Alamanni were defeated by Clovis twice – in 497 and again in 506, when they sought refuge with Theoderic. A little later, we find Theoderic writing to Clovis warning him against attacking the Visigoths: ‘Put away your iron, you who seek to shame me by fighting. I forbid you by my right as a father and as a friend. But in the unlikely event that someone believes that such advice can be despised, he will have to deal with us and our friends as enemies' (Cassiodorus,
Variae
). As Theoderic had already warned Clovis not to prosecute his war against the Alamanni any further, it seemed opportune to represent these events as happening more or less simultaneously, and to refer to them in a single letter, with Clovis's appeal for a harpist thrown in for good measure.

Such diptychs – among the most attractive minor works of Roman art – were often exchanged as gifts on appointment to high office, especially when someone was named as consul. Celebrated examples from
c
. 390–400 are: the diptych of the Symmachi (the family of the grandfather of the Symmachus in the story), defiantly displaying classical figures engaged in
pagan
ritual, at a time when such practices were being rigorously suppressed; that of Stilicho, the front cover showing the Vandal general, the back his wife Serena with their son Eucherius; and the consular diptych of Honorius, showing the emperor arrayed in the full panoply of a Roman general.

Although Apollinaris' visit to Clovis is fictional, it is consistent with his known behaviour. When Clovis launched his next attack on the Visigoths, Apollinaris led a contingent from the Auvergne to help Alaric II, only to be killed fighting at the battle of Vouillé, along with Alaric himself.

An opinion attested by Cassiodorus (
Variae
), Ennodius (
Opera
) and Jordanes (
Getica
).

A view astonishingly seeming to predict a central tenet of Wyclif, Luther, Tyndale and other early Reformers a thousand years later. The evangelizing success of the Iro-Christian Church (Armagh, Iona, Lindisfarne, Luxeuil, etc.) was soon to be eclipsed by that of Rome. Beginning with Pope Gregory the Great's sending of Augustine to convert King Ethelbert of Kent in 596, a wave of Roman Catholic missionaries (many of them Anglo-Saxons, such as Wilfrid, Willibrord and Winfrid) had great success in converting non-Catholic areas of Europe, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. In England, in 664 at the Synod of Whitby, the differences between the Celtic and Roman Churches (concerning Easter, tonsures, the role of Scripture, etc.) were thrashed out and finally settled in favour of Roman practice.

Clovis's barbarous feat of throwing both the donkey and its load into the fire is a retelling of an incident which my old tutor Philip Grierson (see Notes for
Chapter 23
) relished recounting at tutorials, to illustrate a certain barbarian leader's (Merovingian king's?) jocular way of demonstrating his physical prowess.

This unfortunately has been lost, but an extant one-volume summary of it was made in the mid sixth century, entitled
Getica
, by Jordanes, a Romanized Goth living in Constantinople.

A term borrowed from Scottish Border history. For centuries, a small strip of land straddling the present Dumfriesshire/Cumbria boundary was disputed between the Scots and the English – a situation tailor-made for exploitation by the Border reivers, with their endless capacity
for guile and manipulation. In 1552, with tremendous ceremony, the French Ambassador presiding, the matter was finally settled. A trench and bank (still known as the Scots' Dike) was driven through the middle of what was now no longer the Debatable Land, following the present Border line between the two countries.

The mosaic head and bust, showing Theoderic wearing an impressive diadem, was uncovered during building work in Theoderic's great church in Ravenna, St Apollinare Nuovo. Thought at first to represent Justinian, it is now generally accepted as portraying Theoderic.

These, like the selection of a harpist for Clovis, were important and prestigious commissions, indicative of Boethius' high standing in Theoderic's court. Cassiodorus demonstrates this when he places them in positions of honour in
Variae
. Apart from his official work, Boethius – still only in his twenties – was tackling numerous demanding scholarly projects, such as translating from Greek to Latin all the works of Aristotle and the Dialogues of Plato.

Theoderic's palace has gone, but is represented in mosaic in the church of St Apollinare Nuovo. Diocletian's palace at Split (Spalato), on which it is thought to have been modelled, is immense, dwarfing the present town, which has grown up partly inside its well-preserved shell.

To some scholars (e.g., Ensslin,
Theoderich
) it's an article of faith that no Roman was employed in a military capacity in Theoderic's army. Ever. However, this was not a rubric carved in stone; the example of Cyprianus adds further proof. We learn from Cassiodorus (in
Variae
) that Cyprianus' father Optilio was an ‘old soldier', and that the entire family was steeped in military tradition – presumably from imperial times. The expression ‘with a Gothic heart' was formed as a counterpart to Sidonius Apollinaris'
cor Latinum
(
Epistulae V
).