Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus (c. 485–585) lived one of the most remarkable lives of the sixth century. He served as the chief minister of the Ostrogothic kings of Italy — essentially running the Roman bureaucratic machine for Germanic rulers who wanted to govern like Roman emperors — and then, after that world collapsed, reinvented himself as a monk and scholar who helped preserve classical learning through the early Middle Ages. His Variae, a collection of nearly 470 official letters and edicts written on behalf of kings Theoderic, Athalaric, and others, is one of the most important administrative archives to survive from any period of Roman history. The letters are formal, deliberate, and often elaborately learned — Cassiodorus could not resist working in a classical allusion or a philosophical digression even when issuing a routine tax directive. He writes about everything from the appointment of provincial governors to the proper repair of the Colosseum, from monetary policy to the marvels of Vesuvius. His correspondents (or rather, the recipients of royal pronouncements) span the entire governing apparatus: senators, bishops, generals, tax collectors, and foreign rulers including the emperor in Constantinople. What makes the Variae irreplaceable is that they show us how a barbarian kingdom actually governed. Cassiodorus was deliberately crafting an image of civilized continuity — presenting Theoderic's Ostrogothic Italy as the legitimate heir of Roman administration. The ornate style is itself the message: as long as the letters sounded Roman, the government was Roman. It was a magnificent performance, and the fact that Cassiodorus carefully collected and published these letters suggests he knew it was one.