Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

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right as praetorian prefect of Italy from 533 to 536. Since his masters preserved
most Roman institutions, and depicted their realm as an imitation of
the empire, the Variae tell us as much about imperial as about barbarian
government. However, they must be handled as cautiously as the laws, and
for similar reasons. Individually, they were written not just to promulgate
decisions, but to legitimate Gothic rule by showing it as effective in practice,
and imperial in style and structures. As a compilation, they probably served
in part as an apology for the author and other Romans who had served the
barbarians, and as a model for future administrators of Italy appointed by
Justinian. Hence, we must be alert for institutional anachronisms, and for an
over-flattering portrait of government. However, the Variae are a valuable
supplement to the laws, both for the institutions, techniques and principles
of administration, and also for its discourse, in which it responded to the
presumed aspirations of its subjects. They have the ring of a government
liturgy, a note absent from the bulk of the laws through the loss of their preambles.
In the appended treatise On the Soul, Cassiodorus gave this liturgy a
foundation in semi-theological reflections on morality and social history.
Moreover, by using, in some cases, the form of private letters between cultivated
upper-class gentlemen (in this, Cassiodorus may have been an innovator),
the Variae highlight the important bond between ruler and subject of
a shared literary culture. All government depends on the formation of such
bonds, and it may be more important to the historian to understand them
than the minutiae of administrative institutions.
Both laws and Variae, moreover, are a prime source of information on
the leading ministers of state, assisting the prosopographical exploration
of social mobility, family ties, politics and career paths. In particular, the
Variae give us not just names and offices, but, in their numerous letters of
appointment to high office, sketches of characters, backgrounds and
careers. These conventional eulogies should be treated with the usual
caution, but are at least evidence for what monarchs and senators expected
of the top administrators. If the Codes affirm the dignity of the monarch
as a fount of laws, the Variae affirm him as a fount of honours.
A variety of unofficial or semi-official sources help us to build up an
image of the establishment classes and their ideas about government.
Procopius’ Secret History, with its scurrilous attacks on Justinian as the great
innovator, tells us both something about his administrative practices and a
great deal about the alienation of men on whom his government depended.
The well-rehearsed invective topoi of the Secret History are the mirror image
of the laudatory presentations of Cassiodorus’ Variae and other more direct
panegyrics such as those of Anastasius by Procopius of Gaza and Priscian,
or of Justinian by Procopius of Caesarea (Buildings) and Paul the Silentiary. 8
8 Scott (1985) argues that Malalas’ Chronicle is another mirror to the Secret History.
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