In 526 when Theoderic died, at the great age of about seventy, he had ruled in Ravenna for thirty-three years. Such longevity was unusual, as was the very particular tomb he had prepared before his death. While Ravenna, like most Roman cities, is built of local brick (even today it remains the normal building material), the king ordered a special shipment of white Istrian marble for his mausoleum. Theoderic’s spectacular twostorey resting place is the only major monument in Ravenna constructed entirely of marble, visible on both the exterior and the interior, with a dome formed of an enormous monolith. Under this incredibly heavy roof, which rested on vast substructures and required considerable skill to erect, the king was laid to rest, probably in the large porphyry bath now on the upper level of the mausoleum.1 Although no text recounts the funeral rite, it must have included a very solemn procession from the palace to the mausoleum, led by his young grandson Athalaric, his daughter Amalasuintha accompanied by the priests of the Arian cathedral and Gothic military leaders, followed by the entire court and city.
In commissioning this particular style of tomb, Theoderic followed the fourth-century Roman precedent of imperial tombs, which were circular domed buildings. He had seen the examples of Constantia’s tomb in Rome, Diocletian’s in the imperial palace at Split, as well as those of the eastern emperors in the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Theoderic magnified this entirely Roman model with a second storey and added a specifically Christian element – the names of the Apostles were carved on spurs of the exterior blocks – and a Gothic feature in the sculpted external decoration that runs around the base of the dome with an echo of Germanic metalor woodwork.2 In arranging this striking combination in the construction of his tomb just beyond the city walls in the Gothic cemetery area, Theoderic made sure that it would remain a perpetual memory for later generations. Although it was adapted for different use, over the centuries the marble structure has resisted decay and still impresses the visitor today.
Theoderic’s standing had been commemorated in a speech written by Ennodius, the deacon from Pavia, who had accompanied his bishop Epiphanius on a diplomatic mission to the Burgundians in 494. Ennodius knew that Theoderic had been educated in Constantinople and would have witnessed the rhetorical tradition of panegyrics (speeches of praise) given at the imperial court. He therefore had to produce his very best prose and characterized Theoderic as a most just ruler, whose outstanding civilitas preserved the peace and co-operation between Goths and Romans. He described Theoderic as the princeps ‘who rules Italy, cherishes Rome and honours the western senate’, and thus governed (imperare) in the manner of a Roman emperor.3 Similarly, the Anonymous Valesianus would later hail Theoderic as optimus princeps, the best prince, ‘a new Trajan’.4 Praising him as a Christian from birth and an ideal Christian ruler, Ennodius avoided any mention of his loyalty to Arian definitions, and compared him favourably with Alexander the Great, who is dismissed as not even a virtuous pagan. On another occasion Ennodius reported that Theoderic kept the Christian faith safe, even though he followed another.5 After comparing him to the Old Testament King David as an ideal Christian ruler, Ennodius asked: ‘Is it in your justice, or your skill in battle, or what is more excellent than both of these, your piety that I should mention that have surpassed all prior emperors?’6 With such superlatives Ennodius characterized the ruler whose presence in Ravenna remains, even when churches that he founded are redecorated, converted to Catholic use or demolished.
After the burial of Theoderic in his mausoleum, his daughter Amalasuintha took charge of the Gothic state in the name of her young son Athalaric, then aged ten (Plate 20).7 She faced a problem because Theoderic’s agreement with Emperor Zeno had not envisaged its continuity into the next generation and both the principals were now dead. In spite of the underlying tensions between Ravenna and Constantinople, the queen mother tried immediately to renew warm relations with Emperor Justin. In the name of the young king, Cassiodorus wrote, ‘Let hatreds be shut up with men entombed’, and recalled the alliances that dated back generations:
You exalted my grandfather in your city to the Consul’s ivory chair; in Italy you distinguished my father Eutharic with the Consul’s robe of office . . . he was adopted as your son by arms, although he was almost your equal in age . . . The name of son which you bestowed on my elders, you will grant more fittingly to a lad. Your love should now take up a father’s role . . . I have assumed a royal inheritance: let me find a place in your thoughts also.8
He thus presented Athalaric to the imperial court in the East as the legitimate heir to the Gothic kingdom of Italy, over which he would rule with his mother’s guidance. Cassiodorus noted that the ambassadors who carried this official letter to Constantinople would also transmit oral messages, a clear indication of the traditional way of conducting diplomacy and a sign that additional arguments would be made to secure the Gothic inheritance.
In another letter composed for Athalaric, Cassiodorus wrote to the Senate at Rome praising their acceptance of Pope Felix IV (526–30), who had been elevated to the bishopric as a result of Theoderic’s intervention in a dispute. In making this claim that a king ‘of alien faith’ had resolved the rivalry between two candidates, Cassiodorus draws attention to the ‘judgement of a good prince’ and reminds the Senate of Theoderic’s desire ‘that religion in all churches should flourish with good priests’. He thus linked the new Gothic king’s personal dedication to the Arian Christian faith with his authority over Rome, a combination that the young prince intended to continue, since Athalaric assured the Senate of his pleasure in ‘conversing with the chief men of my realm’.9
One year later Cassiodorus was writing to the governor of Lucania, Severus, about the city councillors (curiales) of southern Italy who had abandoned their cities in order to live in the countryside of Bruttium. This instance of neglect had to be corrected immediately. Here Cassiodorus extrapolates on the delights of urban living: ‘visiting the forum, looking on at honest crafts, legislation, entertainments such as playing at draughts, going to the baths or exchanging splendid dinner parties.’ In particular, he stresses the importance of the city for the education of children, who are otherwise condemned to an ignorant life in the wilderness surrounded by slaves. Behind this instruction we can sense the same pressures of heavy curial responsibilities addressed by earlier emperors and the importance of local elites in sustaining city life. Severus was also ordered to ensure that the annual fair of St Cyprian was safely celebrated at Marcellianum in Lucania, because it provided a market for seaborne trade, foreign goods and regional exports and an outlet for products from Campania, Bruttium, Calabria and Apulia.10
Before his death Theoderic had given Cassiodorus a most important task: to write the official history of the Goths, recording for posterity the origin of his people and their history prior to their arrival in the Roman world. His most experienced and skilled speech writer was therefore obliged to research how the tribal group had developed its own selfawareness, its historic activities and its migration into Italy – a long saga from mythic origins, through many battles, up to their domination of the Roman West. In composing this history Cassiodorus found valuable evidence in the works of the Gothic geographers, who had noted many place names and routes followed by the tribes. He appears to have written it between 526 and 530, under the patronage of Theoderic’s daughter Amalasuintha, and naturally highlighted the importance of the Ostrogoths among all the other Germanic and Gothic tribes. The Origo Gothica provided a genealogy, which extended from Theoderic’s father Valamir down to his grandson Athalaric, in twelve books that preserved much unusual, first-hand evidence about the Gothic migrations. The text does not survive, but it served as the basis for Jordanes, when he wrote his Getica (De origine actibusque Getarum, The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths) in Constantinople in about 551.11 At the time Cassiodorus was in the eastern capital, having accompanied King Witigis and his family into exile in 540, taking the text with him.
His Origo Gothica is typical of the process of ethnogenesis, an account of how tribal peoples construct their identity and history, which is often provoked by their coming into contact with others who already have a sense of their own history. Among the Franks, for instance, the story of origins is traced back to Troy and Aeneas is claimed as their fatherfounder. Isidore of Seville, a Visigoth in Spain, similarly compiled biographies of famous men that included his own Gothic heroes. The Visigoths in Toulouse and the Burgundians in Savoy also aspired to synthesize their Germanic traditions with Roman customs to gain a quasiimperial status.12 But they did not have the lasting impact created by Cassiodorus’ work, which presented Theoderic’s collaboration, co-operation and relative tolerance as exceptional achievements, informed by his youthful exposure to the eastern court in Constantinople. In Jordanes’ Getica these features were naturally employed to accord a superior status to the Ostrogothic court at Ravenna.
Cassiodorus frequently alludes to his own role in sustaining the Gothic kingdom in the first years of Athalaric’s reign, claiming to have been a great support to the queen mother as she formed a link between her father’s rule and the uncertain succession of her son. In 533, when Athalaric, now aged seventeen, was old enough to take over the government, Cassiodorus composed a eulogy to Amalasuintha, who had ‘achieved the glory of either sex’, as ‘one who surpasses all the praise given to men’. In the queen, he continues, ‘her ancestors’ – he proceeds to list them – ‘would see their glory reflected as in a clear mirror’ and would recognize the superiority of her throng of virtues. He praises her government, identifying Theoderic and his daughter as famous leaders of the Gothic kingdom at its zenith, and makes a long, disparaging comparison with Galla Placidia.13 Procopius also noted that Amalasuintha directed the government wisely, ‘displaying to a great extent the masculine temper’, keeping the peace between Goths and Romans.14 Although royal women, widows and daughters of kings, often had the best claim to rule, contemporaries perceived their gender as a weakness that nearly always affected their innate capacity. And Amalasuintha’s position was subtly different from her fifth-century imperial counterpart, Empress Galla Placidia, in that she ruled over a kingdom under the authority of the eastern emperor, who remained the supreme overlord.
When Amalasuintha prepared her son for his task as ruler of the Ostrogoths using the same classical upbringing that had given her such authority, some sections of the Gothic nobility objected. In particular they criticized the Roman style of education, and made military training their priority, insisting that Athalaric master more warlike skills appropriate for a Gothic king who would lead them in battle. Amalasuintha had to dismiss the tutors she’d put in charge of her son’s education and permit others to instruct him in a military, Gothic style. Yet she persisted in stressing the importance of education in the classical style to the Senate in Rome, insisting that the professors of grammar, rhetoric and law had to be paid their full salaries. Grammar, in particular, is singled out as ‘the mistress of words, the embellisher of the human race . . . barbarian kings do not use her . . . she remains unique to lawful rulers.’15
The Goths’ hostility to her training in classical literature may also have extended to the queen’s relationship with the imperial court, where Justinian ruled from 527. In the last years of Theoderic, Constantinople’s moves to curb Arian worship had provoked the murder of Boethius and polarized the difference between Goth and Roman. Amalasuintha’s warmer contacts with the emperor were interpreted as dangerous to the Gothic state, and she found it much harder than her father to unite the two factions within her kingdom. In addition, she could not emulate her father’s commanding presence, due to his military skill, and the absence of a male leader became more pronounced as Athalaric displayed little interest in this role.
The eight years of her regency, 526–34, are characterized by a clear emphasis on justice, which can be traced in letters and decrees written by Cassiodorus in the name of young Athalaric. One of the first was the decision to restore the properties of Boethius and Symmachus to their children. An edict issued in the young man’s name included many provisions, such as those against bribery and against adulterous men, who are to be denounced and punished.16 Other decrees stress the need for improvements in court procedure, against the purchase of ecclesiastical office and for the rule of law and the promotion of good order (civilitas) throughout society. Similarly, the appointment of a man highly skilled in letters, possibly the wellknown Arator, as count of the bodyguards, or adviser, conciliarius, to the military official Tuluin, reflects Amalasuintha’s concern for good administration at the highest level, since the ‘magnificent patrician Tuluin’ was entrusted with ‘handling the secrets of my empire’.17 When the court learned of the death of the queen’s aunt, Amalafrida, in Africa, Amalasuintha ordered a severe condemnation of the Vandal king. The rebuke, however, remained entirely rhetorical because the Goths in Ravenna had no way to avenge her murder.18
The queen maintained the court at Ravenna as the centre of both Gothic and Roman culture, keeping in contact with the Senate and bishop of Rome as well as the imperial court in Constantinople through special envoys and diplomatic missions. She also held the keys to the Gothic treasury, accumulated by Theoderic, kept in the palace, which continued to be a focus and sanctuary for all Goths.19 When the queen’s cousin Amalaberga was forced to flee from Thuringia, she took refuge in Ravenna with her children (Belisarius, Justinian’s general, later took the children back to Constantinople).20 Ravenna was constantly enriched by the port activities at Classis that linked it with so many parts of the Mediterranean. Commercial and political opportunities attracted investment in the city, for instance, in opulent houses such as the Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra that was independent of the court, though the occupant of this particularly fine building may have been employed there.
It was during Amalasuintha’s regency that a serious quarrel broke out among the Catholic clergy of Ravenna who objected to the way Bishop Ecclesius set their salaries. They split into two factions, divided rather evenly between those who supported the bishop and the rest led by the archdeacon Mastulus. An appeal to Pope Felix IV resulted in a document that the historian Agnellus found in the archives and copied into his Book of the Pontiffs of Ravenna. The Catholic cathedral church had built up a very large annual income of 160 lbs of gold (12,000 solidi), of which one quarter, 40 lbs or 3,000 solidi, was set aside for the sixty clergy enrolled in the church.21 Of this total eleven were priests, ten deacons, five subdeacons, twelve acolytes, twelve readers, four cantors, three defensors, two deans and one was the superintendent of stores.22 Income on this level put Ravenna into the first rank of all ecclesiastical sees, directly below those of the patriarchs, and well ahead of the 30 lbs of gold considered appropriate to the top bishoprics in 546 when Justinian issued an edict on ecclesiastical matters. Of the 3,000 solidi divided between the staff of sixty at Ravenna, the eleven priests and ten deacons probably got a larger portion, to which they added their share of offerings from the laity.23
This income had accumulated during the fifth century to make Ravenna one of the richest churches in the empire. In 482 it was already substantial, as we learn from a priest named Gregory, who complained that on his election to the provincial bishopric of Mutina he would earn less than as a priest in Ravenna. He angrily demanded an estate with an annual salary of 30 solidi to maintain his income.24 Under Bishop Aurelianus (in 521) church revenues were increased by additional donations: farms that provided taxes in kind (oil, wine, corn), forests, villages and subordinate country churches, such as the territory of Comaclio, where the church (or chapel, monasterium) of St Mary in Pado uetere was built. Some of the property donated to the church was leased to secular figures: Pope Felix alludes to such leases when he recommends that the archdeacon Mastulus should reclaim all those properties, both rural and urban, that had been given ‘through no necessity of friendship’ to secular men. His stress on keeping uptodate written records of leases and having tighter control over secular landlords must reflect a common problem of sixth-century church leaders. The bishop of Ravenna had seven notaries to copy and file all documents relating to the patrimony of the Catholic church.25
Pope Felix also instructed the clergy who held urban or rural estates belonging to the church to withhold only what was due to them from the revenues so generated. All the rest of the money should be brought into the church ‘for the benefit of ecclesiastical profit’. The bishop was responsible for all the churches of his diocese as well as monasteries for men and women, and Felix gave advice about maintaining ‘reason, justice, peace and discipline’ in all of them. His letter appears to have put an end to the quarrel with Mastulus, and Ecclesius thereafter ‘was with his sheep like a father with his sons . . . he ruled his church in peace’.26
With this considerable income and the help of the banker Julianus, who donated an additional sum of 26,000 solidi, Bishop Ecclesius commissioned the building of the most striking church in Ravenna, the one dedicated to San Vitale, discussed in Chapter 15. The bishop ensured that his portrait appeared in the apse, while Julianus was thanked in inscriptions and through his monograms in both Greek and Latin. In addition to their joint patronage, Ecclesius also commissioned a manuscript of the Bible, which was emended by Patricius, as recorded in an inscription in a ninth-century copy.27 The Gothic queen mother did nothing to obstruct the ambitious building plans of the Catholic community and tolerated their architectural competitiveness. No specific foundations are attributed to Amalasuintha, but it seems likely that she extended her father’s patronage of the Arian churches. The historian Agnellus associates her with the building of a house on her property, where a chapel of St Peter, called Orfanotrophium, still existed in his time.28 The use of a Greek term suggests that it may have been connected to an orphanage comparable to those in Constantinople.29 Within Ravenna the two Christian groups co-existed in pronounced contrast to the contemporaneous Arian persecution of Catholic Christians in North Africa and Spain and the condemnation and exclusion of Arian Christians in Rome.
In her relations with the Catholic church, Amalasuintha intervened in papal elections, as her father had, in her case to ensure that candidates did not distribute huge sums to buy the votes of the poor. A letter of 533 instructed Pope John II to inform all the bishops under his control that they would be punished by canon law if they were found guilty. A similar letter to the prefect of Rome ordered him to have the measure inscribed on marble tablets and placed in the atrium of the church of St Peter. And an official was sent with the letter to see that the engraving was made and duly erected, so that there could be no room for doubt.30 As with other legal measures, this practice of engraving the law and setting it up where everyone could see it continued the traditional Roman method of law enforcement. It also commemorated Gothic control over Rome as part of the kingdom ruled by Theoderic’s daughter and grandson, even though Cassiodorus expressed this most politely.
From 480 until 539, when it was conquered by imperial forces from Constantinople, Istria, at the head of the Adriatic, formed ‘the storeroom of the royal city’. Wine, oil, corn and dried fish paste (garum) were produced in abundance, as well as fish, oysters and other seafoods; the church of Ravenna owned forests there that provided wood for building. The Ravennati also had villas there and relaxed in the cooler climate, creating summer resorts only a day’s sailing across the Adriatic, equivalent to those of Campania cultivated by the Romans. The queen may have moved to the delightful settlements of Pola (Pula), Ruginium (Rovinj) and Parentium (Poreč) to avoid the summer heat. Close contact by sea is documented in several of Cassiodorus’ letters to officials based in Istria in 537: hearing from travellers that there was an exceptionally rich harvest, the praetorian prefect sent an official to assess the crops and then establish a fair price for them. He also informed local shipowners that they should transport the crops without delay. And when he received a petition from a bishop in Venetia where the harvest had failed, he cancelled the normal army requirements in kind (wine and corn) and arranged for wine to be supplied from Istria at market rates.31
In the early 530s, when it was evident that the young king Athalaric was often too inebriated to fulfil his regal duties, hostility towards Amalasuintha increased, perhaps driven by her pro-Constantinopolitan policy maintained through regular diplomatic contacts with Justinian. Fearing an insurrection against her rule, Amalasuintha wrote to the emperor asking for his protection, and he ordered the preparation of a refuge for her in Dyrrachium (ancient Epidamnus, modern Durrës), a port on the eastern coast of the Adriatic within the East Roman empire. In 534, she loaded all her possessions and a large part of Theoderic’s treasure onto a ship and sent it off to Dyrrachium ahead of her own possible flight. But then she successfully arranged the deaths of her chief opponents and felt confident enough to recall the ship.32 Both of these moves must have scandalized the Goths at court.
Athalaric’s death in October 534 deprived Amalasuintha of the role of regent and seriously weakened her position within the court. She then felt an overwhelming need for a male figure to act as her consort and invited her cousin Theodahad, the son of Theoderic’s sister Amalafrida, to become king (Plate 21). Announcing her choice to the Senate in Rome, she declared that she had preserved the palace in Ravenna for a noble Amal (the family name). She described Theodahad as a man of royal stature, a scholar known for his enviable literary learning, including ecclesiastical letters, his charity and hospitality, and one who had been admonished by the virtues of his ancestors and effectively guided by his uncle Theoderic.33 Against this, his unlawful accumulation of estates in Tuscany had already provoked serious criticism among the Goths, and Amalasuintha had instructed him to desist. Their co-operation as a ruling pair did not start out well. In addition to the queen’s established contact with Justinian, Theodahad also sustained close contact with both emperor and empress through an imperial envoy, Peter the patrician.34 Before 535 he appears to have suggested that he would hand over control of the Gothic kingdom if the emperor would allow him to retire to Constantinople and pursue his interests in Neoplatonic texts, a proposal that may reflect the reality of eastern ambitions over Italy.
While he cheerfully accepted Amalasuintha’s offer to become king, Theodahad exploited his new position by plotting against her. Amid a flurry of diplomatic embassies between the court and Constantinople, sent by both Amalasuintha and Theodahad, the queen was taken from Ravenna to an island probably in Lake Bolsena in central Italy. When Justinian sent Peter the patrician to Theodahad to threaten war if any harm came to her, the Gothic king tried to reassure him that all was well and forced Amalasuintha to write a similar letter in her own name. Shortly after this, however, late in 535 or early 536, Theodahad ordered her death and imprisoned the eastern envoy, and as soon as this news reached Constantinople, Justinian made it the pretext for a determined attack on Italy.35