Theodoric

This is the famous Senigallia medallion, named after the town near which a surviving example was discovered in 1894. The medallion has generally been dated to 500 and associated with Theoderic’s visit to Rome on the occasion of his tricennalia. However, my old tutor Philip Grierson has argued for a date of 509 (see ‘The Date of Theoderic’s Gold Medallion’, Hikuin, 1985).

yet were themselves still here

And, in some cases, still are: the Massimo (Maximus), Colonna and Gaetani families have pedigrees stretching back to the Roman Republic. (The consul Fabius Maximus was famous for adopting ‘Fabian’ tactics against Hannibal.)

Chapter 24

the bowels of the amphitheatre

Like one of those clever cutaway models designed to show the inner workings of the human body or the internal structure of a building, the Colosseum, in its present plundered state, shows clearly the honeycomb of passages under the arena where the animals were caged and then transported to the surface by means of a complex system of lifts and ramps.

Thrasamund’s. . hunters

The excavated Roman villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily boasts a magnificent series of mosaics, dating from c. AD 300, showing how animals for the Roman Games were captured and transported. There are mounted men driving stags into a circle of nets; men loading elephants onto a galley; a Roman animal- catcher directing Moorish assistants to surround and net a lion; an ox-drawn cart with a shipping-crate containing one of the big cats; etc.

he strained to twist the creature’s horns

I hold my hands up; the incident’s a shameless crib from a scene in the film Quo Vadis? .

can have terrible consequences

There is ample evidence that seditio popularis (the expression surely needs no translation) at this time caused Theoderic considerable concern. The Liber pontificalis paints an alarming picture of fighting between Laurentian and Symmachan mobs (egged on, respectively, by Festus and Probinus, and by Faustus niger); of clergy put to the sword, and nuns taken from convents and clubbed; and fighting in the streets of Rome a daily occurrence. Pope Gelasius (492-96) reported that two successive bishops were murdered in Scyllaeum (Squillace), and the Fragmentum Laurentianum uses the expression ‘bella civilia’ to describe the rioting in Rome. Things got so bad that on 27 August 502 Theoderic wrote to the bishops assembled in Rome to use their influence to curb the prevailing disorder.

Chapter 25

to hold administrative posts

Under Theoderic, the administration of Italy continued virtually unchanged from imperial times. There were a few (a very few) deviations from his principle whereby the bureaucracy would be manned by Romans, the army by Goths. Count Colosseus, in charge of Pannonia Sirmiensis with troops under him, Servatus Dux Raetiarum, and one Cyprian, who served Theoderic in a military capacity, were all Romans; while Wilia the Comes Patrimonii, Triwila the Praepositus Sacri Cubilici, and the senator Arigern, were all Goths. They were, however, exceptions. To a contemporary, unless they lived in the Gothic heartland of north-east Italy with its capital at Ravenna, it would have been difficult to tell that the country was no longer part of the Roman Empire.

a panegyric. . welcoming refugees

Who were these people? Priscian is not specific, but Zachariah of Mytilene (Historia ecclesiastica) wrote of one Dominic ‘who had a quarrel with the tyrant [Theoderic] and took refuge with King Justinian’. The reference to Justinian (who was not, of course, emperor in Theoderic’s lifetime, but who might loosely be described as ‘king’ in his capacity of virtual co-ruler with Justin) means that the event occurred towards the end of Theoderic’s reign, when the label ‘tyrant’ might be held to have had some justification. Priscian however (as mentioned by Ennodius in Panegyricus dictus Theoderico), was writing at the very beginning of the sixth century, when Theoderic’s popularity was (with the exception of the Laurentian senators disgruntled by the alienation of Church lands) as yet undimmed. Perhaps it was this senatorial clique (expanded by wishful thinking into a larger and more representative group) that Priscian had in mind.

send him an expert harpist

As elsewhere, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, I’ve gone in for some telescoping of events — without, I think, compromising essential historical truth. The Alamanni were defeated by Clovis twice — in 497 and again in 506, when they sought refuge with Theoderic. A little later, we find Theoderic writing to Clovis warning him against attacking the Visigoths: ‘Put away your iron, you who seek to shame me by fighting. I forbid you by my right as a father and as a friend. But in the unlikely event that someone believes that such advice can be despised, he will have to deal with us and our friends as enemies’ (Cassiodorus, Variae). As Theoderic had already warned Clovis not to prosecute his war against the Alamanni any further, it seemed opportune to represent these events as happening more or less simultaneously, and to refer to them in a single letter, with Clovis’s appeal for a harpist thrown in for good measure.

the diptych. . presented to him

Such diptychs — among the most attractive minor works of Roman art — were often exchanged as gifts on appointment to high office, especially when someone was named as consul. Celebrated examples from c. 390–400 are: the diptych of the Symmachi (the family of the grandfather of the Symmachus in the story), defiantly displaying classical figures engaged in pagan ritual, at a time when such practices were being rigorously suppressed; that of Stilicho, the front cover showing the Vandal general, the back his wife Serena with their son Eucherius; and the consular diptych of Honorius, showing the emperor arrayed in the full panoply of a Roman general.

Chapter 26

son of. . Sidonius Apollinaris

Although Apollinaris’ visit to Clovis is fictional, it is consistent with his known behaviour. When Clovis launched his next attack on the Visigoths, Apollinaris led a contingent from the Auvergne to help Alaric II, only to be killed fighting at the battle of Vouille, along with Alaric himself.

despised for their barbarism

An opinion attested by Cassiodorus (Variae), Ennodius (Opera) and Jordanes (Getica).

The sole authority we need

A view astonishingly seeming to predict a central tenet of Wyclif, Luther, Tyndale and other early Reformers a thousand years later. The evangelizing success of the Iro-Christian Church (Armagh, Iona, Lindisfarne, Luxeuil, etc.) was soon to be eclipsed by that of Rome. Beginning with Pope Gregory the Great’s sending of Augustine to convert King Ethelbert of Kent in 596, a wave of Roman Catholic missionaries (many of them Anglo-Saxons, such as Wilfrid, Willibrord and Winfrid) had great success in converting non-Catholic areas of Europe, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. In England, in 664 at the Synod of Whitby, the differences between the Celtic and Roman Churches (concerning Easter, tonsures, the role of Scripture, etc.) were thrashed out and finally settled in favour of Roman practice.

hurled them into the flames

Clovis’s barbarous feat of throwing both the donkey and its load into the fire is a retelling of an incident which my old tutor Philip Grierson (see Notes for Chapter 23) relished recounting at tutorials, to illustrate a certain barbarian leader’s (Merovingian king’s?) jocular way of demonstrating his physical prowess.

Chapter 27

Cassiodorus

’ History of the Goths