The Law 149
does not befit you to abide by foreign customs while living in the justice
of Our time.5For Theoderic, or rather in Cassiodorus’ portrayal of him, Roman law was a
source of prestige and authority through which he (Theoderic) sought to
define and justify his rule. It was an ancient institution that symbolized a con-
nection between his reign and those of other glorious emperors of the past,
thereby reinforcing an ideology that his rule truly witnessed a renewal of all
the hallmarks that once defined classical culture.
But in as much as they were intended as a semi-official record of the barbar-
ian regime, the Variae were a product of political expediency that sought to
illustrate the legitimacy and suitability of the Italian bureaucracy for resum-
ing palatine services following the conclusion of the Gothic War. To that end,
Cassiodorus revised and interpolated letters from a pre-existing assemblage,
and in select cases even invented new letters, to highlight the contributions
of the former bureaucratic elite of Ravenna. Thus, while the core content of
the Variae corresponds closely to the conditions of Ostrogothic Italy as they
actually were, much of the material found in the collection represents later
intervention on the part of Cassiodorus, whose selections, omissions, and
interpolations were influenced by powerful currents of cultural and political
exchange between Rome, Ravenna, and Constantinople.6
The elaborate rhetorical purpose for which Cassiodorus compiled the Variae
required revising a significant portion of genuine chancery documents to com-
municate an idealized image of the bureaucratic elite of Italy as champions
of Rome’s legal, administrative, and cultural traditions. From all of this there
emerges a highly civilized and Romanized picture of things. A much different
and more accurate picture comes to us from the Edictum Theoderici, or Edict of
Theoderic, a collection and emendation of Roman law comprising 154 provi-
sions in addition to a prologue and epilogue. Once thought to be the work of
the Visigothic king Theoderic II, who ruled the kingdom of Aquitaine in south-
ern Gaul from 453 to 466, the edict was in fact composed around the year 500
5 Cassiodorus, Variae 3.17: “Libenter parendum est Romanae consuetudini, cui estis post longa
tempora restituti, quia ibi regressus est gratus, ubi provectum vestros constat habuisse maio-
res. atque ideo in antiquam libertatem deo praestante revocati vestimini moribus togatis,
exuite barbariem, abicite mentium crudelitatem, quia sub aequitate nostri temporis non vos
decet vivere moribus alienis.” See also Variae 4.26, 4.33 and 9.19 for references to Gothic kings
as the successors of the Roman legal heritage.
6 On the problems of the Variae as a propagandistic text, see Bjornlie, Politics; id., “What Have
Elephants to Do with Sixth-Century Politics?”, pp. 143–71.