Table Of ContentCASSIODORUS' 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
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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
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Cassiodorus' Chronica: Text, Chronography, and Sources
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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.
