27 After 1,000 years, consuls now ceased to be appointed except when the offi ce was taken
by eastern emperors themselves: see Alan Cameron and Diane Schauer, ‘The last consul.
Basilius and his diptych’, Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982), 126–45.
28 Below, Chapter 5; see also J. Moorhead, ‘Italian loyalties in Justinian’s Gothic War’, Byzan-
tion 53 (1983), 575–96; id., ‘Culture and power among the Ostrogoths’, Klio 68 (1986),
112–22.
29 For a selection of the Variae see S.J.B. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae, translated with notes and
introduction, Translated Texts for Historians 12 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
1992); James W. Halporn, trans., Cassiodorus, Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On
the Soul, with introduction by Mark Vessey, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2004); James J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979). Cassiodorus had been consul in 514, and became magister offi ciorum,
praetorian prefect and patricius: PLRE II, 265–9.
30 This has been controversial: for discussion see Peter Heather, ‘Cassiodorus and the rise
of the Amals: genealogy and the Goths under Hun domination’, Journal of Roman Studies 79
(1989), 103–28; Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity, 100–15.
31 Procopius, Wars IV.1.32–34; PLRE II, 233–37; see Henry Chadwick, Boethius (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1981); Margaret Gibson, ed., Boethius. His Life, Thought and Infl uence
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).
32 See Mark Humphries, ‘Italy, AD 425–605’, Cambridge Ancient History XIII, 525–51;
T.S. Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press,
1984).
33 For the Visigoths at Toulouse see H. Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 172–242, and on the aftermath of Vouillé,
243–6.
34 See Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain. Unity in Diversity, 400–1000, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1995); understanding Visigothic involvement in Spain in the fi fth century
depends very much on the Chronicle of Hydatius: see R.W. Burgess, The Chronicle of Hydatius
and the Consularia Constantinopolitana, ed., with an English translation (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993).
35 See Michael McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce,
AD 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), to be read with Wickham,
Framing the Early Middle Ages, 708–824. For further discussion see Conclusion, below.
36 Venantius: see Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus. Personal and Political Poems, trans.
with notes and introduction, Translated Texts for Historians 23 (Liverpool: Liverpool Uni-
versity Press, 1995): R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
37 P.D. King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1972.), introduction.
38 Cf. Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 102–103; cf. 102 referring to ‘a steady trend [from
the fi fth century] away from supporting armies by public taxation and towards support-
ing them by the rents deriving from private landowning’. The question of who owned the
land and on what terms thus becomes the critical issue. In Framing the Early Middle Ages, 86,
Wickham stresses that the fi fth century marked only the beginning of the changes.
39 For a (somewhat polemical) account of this methodological change among archaeologists
see Heather, Empires and Barbarians, 16–18; discussion of cemetery and other kinds of evi-
dence, including place names, in Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 152–61,
447–54.
40 The process is discussed in detail in Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, 80–93.
41 Heather, Goths and Romans, e.g., 141.
42 For the implications of the gradual erosion of the Roman taxation system in the west see
also Christopher Wickham, ‘The other transition: from the ancient world to feudalism’, Past
and Present 103 (1984), 3–36; cf. id., Framing the Early Middle Ages, 84–92.
43 See R.C. Blockley, ‘Subsidies and diplomacy: Rome and Persia in late antiquity’, Phoenix
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2