Caelianus and Agapitus, Patricians

Caelianus and Agapitus were two senatorial patricians (viri patricii) active in Ostrogothic Italy in the early sixth century, addressed jointly in the Variae, the collected official letters that Cassiodorus drafted on behalf of King Theoderic the Great and his successors. They appear as a pair of high-ranking judges or arbiters entrusted by the royal court with investigating and settling a particular dispute, and are otherwise little attested outside this correspondence. As patricii they belonged to the Roman senatorial aristocracy that the Ostrogothic regime relied upon to administer civil justice in Italy. Beyond their role as recipients of these royal letters, no securely independent biography survives; their dates, careers, and individual identities are essentially known only through the Variae.