Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/782

748 JOKDANES the Breviatio a friend named Castalius invited him to com press into one small treatise the twelve books now lost of the senator Cassiodorius, or Cassiodorus, on The Origin and Actions of the Goths. Jordanes professes to have had the work of Cassiodorius in his hands for but three days, and to reproduce the sense, not the words ; but his book, short as it is, evidently contains long verbatim extracts from the earlier author, and it may be suspected that the story of the " triduana lectio " and the apology " quamvis verba non recolo," possibly even the friendly invitation of Castalius, are mere blinds to cover his own entire want of originality. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact (discovered by Von Sybel) that even the very preface to his book is taken almost word for word from Rufinus s translation of Origen s commentary on the epistle to the Romans. There is no doubt, even on Jordanes s own state ments, that his work is based upon that of Cassiodorius, and that any historical worth which it possesses is due to that fact. Cassiodorius was one of the very few men who, Roman by birth and sympathies, could yet appre ciate the greatness of the barbarians by whom the empire was overthrown. The chief adviser of Theodoric, the East Gothic king in Italy, he accepted with ardour that monarch s great scheme, if indeed he did not himself originally suggest it to his master, of welding Roman and Goth together into one harmonious state, which should preserve the social refinement and the intellectual culture of the Latin-speaking races, without losing the hardy virtues of their Teutonic conquerors. To this aim everything in the political life of Cassiodorius was subservient, and this aim he evidently kept before him in his Gothic history. He translated into his somewhat stilted prose the sagas which were still sung by the Gothic warriors round their camp-fires, 1 telling of the past migrations and dangers of their people. He reduced into form the pedigree which traced the descent of the Amals, Theodoric s kingly house, from gods and heroes. In all this he worked on such lines as a modern historical inquirer would have him work on. Unfortunately, he also accepted the current theory of his age which identified the Goths with the Scythians, whose country Darius Hystaspis invaded, and with the Getoe of Dacia whom Trajan conquered. This double identification enabled him to bring the favoured race in line with the people of classical antiquity, to inter weave with their history stories about Hercules and the Amazons, to make them invade Egypt, to claim for them a share in the wisdom of the semi-mythical Scythian philosopher Zamolxis. He was thus able with some show of plausibility to represent the Goths as " wiser than all the other barbarians and almost like the Greeks" (Jord., De Reb. Get., cap. v.), and to send a son of the Gothic king Telephus to fight at the siege of Troy, on the right side, in rank with the ancestors of the Romans. All this we can now perceive to have no relation to history, but at the time it may have made the subjugation of the Roman less bitter to feel that he was not after all bowing down before a race of barbarian upstarts, but that his Arnal sovereign was as firmly rooted in classical antiquity as any Julius or Claudius who ever wore the purple. A grateful king of the Goths, the young Athalaric, truly said of Cassiodorius, " Originem Gothicam historian! fecit esse Romanam, colligens quasi in unam coronam germen flori- dum, quod per librorum campos passim fuerat ante dis- persum " (Cassiod., Var. ix. 25). Cassiodorius completed his history of the Goths probably about the year 534. In the eighteen years which elapsed between that date and the composition of the De Rebus "Quemadraodum ct in priscis eorum camiiuibiis prcne historico ritu in commune recolitur," De lieb. Get., iv. Geticis of Jordanes, great events, and most disastrous fon the Romano-Gothic monarchy of Theodoric, had tran spired. It was no longer possible to write as if the whole civilization of the Western world would sit down contentedly under the shadow of East Gothic dominion and Amal sovereignty. And moreover, the instincts of Jordanes, as churchman and Catholic, predis posed him to flatter the sacred majesty of Justinian, by whose victorious arms the overthrow of the barbarian king dom in Italy had been effected. Hence we perceive two currents of tendency in the De Rebus Geticis. On the one hand, as a Goth himself and as a transcriber of the philo- Goth Cassiodorius, he magnifies the race of Alaric and Theodoric, and claims for them their full share, perhaps more than their full share, of glory in the past. On the other hand, he speaks of the great anti-Teuton emperor Justinian, and of his reversal of the German conquests of the 5th century, in language which would certainly have grated on the ears of Totila and his heroes. Gelimer the Vandal is " overtaken by the revenge of Justinian," and Africa " long subject to the Vandal yoke is recalled into the liberty of the Roman kingdom." When Ravenna is taken, and Vitigis carried into captivity, Jordanes almost exults in the fact that " the nobility of the Amals and the illustrious offspring of so many mighty men have surrendered to a yet more illustrious prince and a yet mightier general, whose fame shall not grow dim through all the centuries." This laudation, both of the Goths and of their Byzantine conquerors may perhaps help us to understand the political motive with which the De Rebus Geticis was written. In the year 551 Germanus, nephew of Justinian, accompanied by his bride, Matasuntha, granddaughter of Theodoric, set forth to reconquer Italy for the empire. His early death (in 552) prevented any schemes for a revived Romano- Gothic kingdom which may have been based on his personality. His widow, however, bore a posthumous child, also named Germanus, of whom Jordanes speaks (cap. 60) as " blending the blood of the Anicii and the Amals, and furnishing a hope under the divine blessing of one day uniting their glories." This younger Germanus did nothing in after life to realize these anticipations ; but the somewhat pointed way in which his name and his mother s name are mentioned by Jordanes lends some probability to the idea that the De Rebus Geticis was put forth in the interests of a third party, Italian rather than Gothic or Byzantine, and possibly headed by Pope Vigilius, who may have washed to advocate the claims of this infant to an independent sovereignty in Italy. The De Eelus Geticis falls naturally into four parts. The first (chaps, i.-xiii. ) commences with a geographical description of the three quarters of the world, and in more detail of Britain and "Scanzia" (Sweden), from which the Goths under their king Berig migrated to the southern coast of the Baltic. Their migration across what has since been called Lithuania, to the shores of the Euxine, and their differentiation into Visigoths and Ostrogoths, follow. Chaps, v.-xiii. contain an account of the intrusive Geto- Scythian element before alluded to. The second section (chaps, xiv. -xxiv. ) returns to the true history of the Gothic nation, sets forth the genealogy of the Amal kings, and describes the inroads of the Goths into the Roman empire in the 3d century, with the foundation and the overthrow of the. great but somewhat shadowy kingdom of Hermanric. The author here pro bably rests to some extent on Orosius, Ammianus, and other Latin historians, but draws partially at least from native sources. The third section (chaps, xxv.-xlvii. ) traces the history of the "West Goths from the Hunnish invasion to the downfall of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul under Alaric II. (376 to 507 A.D.). The best part of this section, and indeed of the whole book, is the seven chapters devoted to Attila s invasion of Gaul and the battle of the Mauriac plains. Here we have in all probability a verbatim extract from Cassiodorius, who has interwoven with his narrative large portions of the Gothic sagas. The celebrated expression " certaminis gaudia " assuredly came at first neither from the suave minister Cassiodorius nor from the small-scaled