upon men and things fourteen hundred years
ago, these _Variae_ of Cassiodorus; and for their own sake, as literary
productions, most characteristic, most entertaining. Not quite easy to
read, for the Latin is by no means Augustan, but after labour well
spent, a delightful revelation of the man and the age. Great is the
variety of subjects dealt with or touched upon; from the diplomatic
relations between Ravenna and Constantinople, or the alliances of the
Amal line with barbaric royalties in Gaul and Africa, to the pensioning
of an aged charioteer and the domestic troubles of a small landowner.
We form a good general idea of the condition of Italy at that time,
and, on many points political and social, gather a fund of most curious
detail. The world shown to us is in some respects highly civilized, its
civilization still that of Rome, whose laws, whose manners, have in
great part survived the Teutonic conquest; from another point of view
it is a mere world of ruin, possessed by triumphant barbarism, and
sinking to intellectual darkness. We note the decay of central power,
and the growth of political anarchy; we observe the process by which
Roman nobles, the Senatorial Order when a Senate lingers only in name,
are becoming the turbulent lords of the Middle Ages, each a power in
his own territory, levying private war, scornful of public interests.
The city of Rome has little part in this turbid history, yet her name
is never mentioned without reverence, and in theory she is still the
centre of the world. Glimpses are granted us of her fallen majesty; we
learn that Theodoric exerted himself to preserve her noble buildings,
to restore her monuments; at the same time we hear of marble stolen
from palaces in decay, and of temples which, as private property, are
converted to ignoble use. Moreover, at Rome sits an ecclesiastical
dignitary, known as _Papa_, to whose doings already attaches
considerable importance. One of the last acts of the Senate which had
any real meaning was to make a decree with regard to the election of
this Bishop, forbidding his advance by the way of Simony. Theodoric, an
Arian, interferes only with the Church of Rome in so far as public
peace demands it. In one of his letters occurs a most remarkable dictum
on the subject of toleration. "_Religionem imperare non possumus, quia
nemo cogitur ut credat invitus_--we cannot impose a religious faith,
for no one can be compelled to believe against his conscience