Cassiodorus’ "Chronica": Text, Chronography, and Sources PDF
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CASSIODORUS' CHRONICA TEXT, CHRONOGRAPHY AND SOURCES Michael Klaassen A DISSERTATION in Classical Studies Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 SupefvTsfor of Dissertation / Ji\'j) ] JM Richard W. Burgess/Trofessor of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa Graduate Group Chairperson Dissertation Committee Jeremy Mclnerney, Professor of Classical Studies Campbell Grey, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies UMI Number: 3414225 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Dissertation Publishing UMI 3414225 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uest ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Cassiodorus' Chronica: Text, Chronography, and Sources COPYRIGHT 2010 Michael Walter Klaassen iii ABSTRACT CASSIODORUS' CHRONICA: TEXT, CHRONOGRAPHY AND SOURCES Michael Klaassen Supervisor: Richard W. Burgess A new text of Cassiodorus' Chronica is followed by the first analysis in any language of Cassiodorus' chronographic methods and sources. To construct his consular list Cassiodorus used a now-lost consularia extracted from Livy and Aufidius Bassus from 509 BCE to 27 CE, the Cursuspaschalis of Victorius of Aquitaine (from 28 to 457), and a now-lost extension of Victorius' work (from 458 to 519). An examination and comparison of the Livian and Aufidian consular names with the surviving witnesses to the same Livian consularia, the Liber prodigiorum of Julius Obsequens and Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 668, demonstrates that the original consularia was a much larger document which included material drawn from sources other than Livy. A similar comparison of the consuls of Victorius of Aquitaine and Cassiodorus reveals a few adjustments and alterations of consular names, but it is unclear whether they were made by Cassiodorus or were present in his source. A comparison of Cassiodorus' list from 458 with the other consular lists from fifth and sixth century Italy, shows that Cassiodorus, whose list is almost perfect, worked hard to make sure that his list contained both the eastern and the western consuls for the year. Cassiodorus drew historical notes from Jerome, Prosper of Aquitaine and Eutropius which he inserted into his consular list with limited success, content to place them relative to imperial reigns, but not to the consular list. He epitomized his sources iv and passed over ecclesiastical details, concentrating rather on secular history. A comparison of Cassiodorus' historical notes from 458 to 500 with other consularia from the same time-period shows that Cassiodorus used a recension of the consularia Italica as a source, closely related to a similar text used by Paul the Deacon in the ninth century. Cassiodorus' work, often described as a panegyric of the ruling Ostrogothic family in Italy, is not successful as a panegyric, but should be seen rather, in the context of Cassiodorus' whole corpus, as the author's attempt to present the history of the world succinctly and accurately. V Introduction On 1 January 519 CE, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator delivered a panegyric before a meeting of the senate in Rome, praising the consul for the year, Eutharic Cilliga, husband of the eldest daughter of King Theoderic the Great, and heir apparent to Theoderic's throne. The celebrations, Cassiodorus tells us, were so extraordinary that even the legate from the eastern court was amazed. The people of Rome were so enamoured of their new consul that they longed for him even after he went back to Ravenna, where he put on another round of games in the same lavish style.1 Shortly thereafter the panegyrist presented the consul with another document: a chronicle from the creation of the world to his consulship. We do not know exactly when or how the work was delivered to Eutharic, nor is there any evidence that anyone in the ancient world used this particular chronicle after its composition. Cassiodorus himself does not mention it again.2 At the end of the chronicle proper is appended a list of consuls which carries the work forward to 559, so it is fair to assume that the last ancient hand to deal with the document added these names at some point shortly after 559. The Chronica has survived in two manuscripts only, both copies of the same archetype which was the basis for Johannes Cuspinianus' work, De consulibus Romanorum commentarii, published posthumously in 1553. But between 559 and when it shows up in Cuspinianus' library in the sixteenth century there are few hints of its existence. 1 Chron. 1364. 2 There are two places where he might have mentioned it: Institutiones 1.17.2, where he discusses chronicles, but limits himself to explicitly Christian works, and the preface to the de Orthographic/, where he gives a list of his works, but only those after his conversion. He makes no reference to it in the Variae. vi Mommsen published the Chronica twice, once in 1861 in Abhandlungen der Saechsichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften3 and later, in 1894, in the second of the Chronica Minora volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi series.4 Apart from Mommsen's brief introductions, the work has received no major study — unlike the Gallic chronicle of 452, and the chronicles of Prosper, Hydatius, and Marcellinus — and has been used, like most late antique chronicles, merely as a source for the investigation of other subjects, notably the Livian epitome that Cassiodorus used as a source for his work and the well-chewed issue of its relationship to Cassiodorus' lost Gothic History.5 More recently, J. J. O'Donnell devoted seven pages to it, but the Chronica normally only appears in footnotes in larger works on Ostrogothic Italy, and typically does not attract much attention for itself. Most authors lay stress on the work as panegyric and as a piece of propaganda for the Ostrogothic regime and Theoderic's ruling Amal family.6 To be sure it is a spare work which superficially presents little that is unique or valuable to the study either of the chronicle genre or late antiquity, and as such it is a little intractable, so it is not to be wondered at that scholars have found little to say about it. Still, I believe my efforts in this direction have been repaid in the following study. I have followed an introductory chapter on Cassiodorus and the genre in which he wrote with a new text of the Chronica in chapter two. Mommsen's text in Chronica Minora is, on the whole, a good piece of work, and there are no cruces in the textual 3 Mommsen 1861. The introduction was republished in Mommsen, T. Gesammelte Schriften, 1909, vol. 9, 668-690. 4 Mommsen 1894. 5 Livian epitome: Sanders 1905, Schmidt 1968; the Gothic History: Croke 1987, Heather 1989. 6 E.g. O'Donnell 1979, 38ff., Moorhead 1992, 175, Amory 1997, 66-68.
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