Episode 27 — Cassiodorus

March 25th is supposedly the birthday of Venice. That might be true, or it might not be because we have no primary sources for such an event, and no archaeological evidence.

The oldest written source we have, which mention the earliest residents of the lagoons, is a letter somebody sent them, from around 537.

Links

• The Variae — The Complete Translation by M. Shane Bjornlie
• Translation by Thomas Hodgkin
• The originals in Latin

Transcript

Episode 27 — Cassiodorus

According to legend, the birthday of Venice is on March 25th, 421.

A group of tribunes from Padua — public servants or military commanders — came to the lagoon near Rialto, and founded a church there. That church was San Giacometo, which would make the Rialto area the origin of Venice.

That’s very nice and specific. The problem with this story is that it is just a story. We have no primary sources for it.

The first references to the story are from some medieval chronicles.

They were written seven hundred years after the events they relate.

In comparison, it would be like basing our account of medieval history on sources written in the 1900s.

From more reliable sources, we have indications that land for San Giacometo was donated, and a church built around 1100, with no mention of any earlier church in the area. Archaeological digs around and under the Church of San Giacometo has confirmed as much.

The story about a precise founding date for Venice on March 25th, 421, is pure myth.

That didn’t prevent the Municipality of Venice from having a huge celebration a few years back, for the 1600th anniversary of Venice.

A good story is a good story, even if it is not an entirely true story.

People in the lagoon

Now, this story doesn’t have to be entirely false, either, just because we don’t have any primary sources for those specific — and probably imaginary — events.

We have, in fact, good reason to believe that there were a substantial number of people living in the lagoons, at least in the 530s, and that they were quite well-organised, did good business, and therefore probably had been there for some time.

We know that because somebody wrote them a letter.

That somebody was a Roman aristocrat named Flavius Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, but usually just Cassiodorus, and in more formal contexts, Senator.

Senator was, in the case of Cassiodorus, a proper name and not a title.

His letter is the first surviving description we have of the communities and people living in the lagoons in late Antiquity, in the centuries before Venice became Venice.

Some background

Before we delve into the actual letters of Cassiodorus, let’s do a quick recap of the political situation in Italy at the time, and how it got there. We need that context to properly understand what Cassiodorus was writing, and why.

Until the year 286, the Roman Empire was one polity, but it was huge, and in that year, emperor Diocletian introduced the tetrachy. The empire was divided in two halves, an eastern and a western part, each with an Augustus — emperor — and a Caesar — a vice-emperor and designated heir.

Hence, the rule of four, the tetrachy.

The empire was still supposed to be one, even its governance had two parallel tracks. They were supposed to coordinate.

Now, theory is one thing, and practice another, and in practice those parallel tracks had great difficulty staying parallel.

Already in the early 300s, the system was creaking under the pressure of internal strife and competition, and in 324, Constantine the Great had made himself ruler of both parts.

The division of east and west didn’t disappear, and there would be separate emperors in the two halves for much of the 300s. However, in 395, with the death of emperor Theodosius, the split became permanent, and the two empires were de facto separate, and the tracks no longer parallel.

The divide was never formalised, though.

Theoretically, it was still one empire, but in practice, they were two distinct polities.

The Eastern Empire remained with capital in Constantinople, previously called Byzantium, which is why we often call it the Byzantine Empire. They didn’t. For the people of the time, it was always the Roman Empire, until 1453.

The Western Empire was much less stable, and had various capitals, including Trier in Germany, Milan in northern Italy, and finally Ravenna in central Italy.

In 476, the nominally last emperor of the Western Empire was deposed in a palace coup in Ravenna.

The man behind the coup was Odoacer, the commander of the imperial army in the west. He was not born Roman, but he had spent his entire life within the Roman cultural sphere. He had the same kind of education, spoke the same languages, and saw the world in much the same way as those who by chance had been born Roman.

Odoacer was not an outsider, even if Byzantine propaganda saw it fit to portray him as a ‘barbarian’.

He therefore didn’t overturn the old system of government in the Western Empire. For a provincial area, like the land of the venetii, little, if anything, changed.

What Odoacer did do, was to send the imperial insignia to Constantinople, which suggests that he understood the system perfectly. In that way, he told the eastern emperor that he was not making himself emperor by force, that he recognised the (imaginary) unity of the empire, and that he accepted Byzantine suzerainty.

And, initially, Constantinople did nothing.

Things weren’t exact quiet in the east at the time, but as emperor Zeno returned to power, he let Odoacer rule in Italy, under that condition that he recognised Julius Nepos, another contender for the imperial throne of the west, who had sought refuge in his lands in the Balkans, and had the support of emperor Zeno.

The relationship didn’t last, though. Julius Nepos was murdered in 480, and Odoacer seized the occasion to make a grab for his lands, which, however, were formally part of the Eastern Empire.

Emperor Zeno had another, mostly Germanic, people living in the Balkans. They were the Ostrogoths, and they had caused him quite a bit of headache. Consequently, he hired them to go to Italy, and bring the peninsula under Byzantine control.

Their ruler, Theodoric, arrived with his army in Italy in 489, and the war with Odoacer raged back and forth for several years.

Finally, in 493, the two agreed to joint rule, and Theodoric entered Ravenna for the ceremonial reconciliation. During the banquet, Theodoric rose to hold a speech or offer a toast, and as he finished, drew his sword and slew Odoacer, whose entourage was also killed.

This act of premeditated treason left Theodoric in sole control of the Italian peninsula.

Emperor Zeno, who had sent Theodoric to Italy, had died in 491, and consequently Theodoric settled in as ruler and king of Italy, initially with little opposition from Constantinople.

While Theodoric wasn’t of Roman birth, just like Odoacer, he was steeped in Roman culture throughout his life, and the rule of Italy didn’t diverge from the Roman ways beyond what was required by the developments. The Ostrogoths, as they became enemies of Constantinople, would also be tainted with the label ‘barbarians’, but they weren’t more savage than anybody else.

On the administrative and bureaucratic level, there was much more continuity than change. Things mostly continued as they had. Civilian administration, the state bureaucracy, mostly remained in the hands of the old Roman elite, while the military was firmly Ostrogoth.

For the lands of the Veneti, in the north-east, it was very much business as usual. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

This is why the traditional narrative of a “decline and fall of Rome” is not entirely true. The ethnicity of the top guy might have changed from Roman to something else, but the people doing the day-to-day business of running the state were still Roman, and even the new rulers, despite their birth, were culturally as Roman as one could be.

The Ostrogoths would rule Italy, or parts of it, until 554.

Theodoric died in 526, and had a monumental mausoleum constructed in Ravenna, which still stands. So does the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaris and the Baptistry of the Arians, also in Ravenna, from his reign.

In Constantinople, when Justinian came to power in 527, things changed. He soon embarked on a project of restoring imperial power to the west, and sent his general Belisarius to North Africa in 533.

In 535, having retaken North Africa from the Vandals, Belisarius set across to Sicily, to conquer Italy for the empire. This war, called the Gothic Wars, would last, on and off, for two decades.

Doing a blow-by-blow account of these wars is well beyond the scope of this episode, so that will have to be for another time.

However, an important event for our story, is the siege of Rome in 537–538. Belisarius had quickly taken Rhegium (Reggio Calabria) and Naples, which had been sacked ferociously. Therefore, when the Byzantine troops arrived at Rome, the city quickly surrendered to avoid a similar fate.

The Ostrogoths were taken by surprise by the rapid advances of Belisarius, and king Theodahad was deposed and replaced with Witiges. Under Witiges, the Ostrogoths besieged the Byzantines in Rome for one year, during which various atrocities happened.

The letters of Cassiodorus, which are the subject of this episode, are from early September 537, so during this siege, even if they were probably written in Ravenna.

As the war progressed, Belisarius took Ravenna in 540, captured Witiges and his associates, who were all taken as prisoners to Constantinople.

Our hero, Cassiodorus, might have been in this group. Whether he was a captive or not, he did end up in Constantinople around that time, where he would stay for the next 10–15 years.

The political upheaval, which had started generations earlier, in the mid-400s, combined with the economic and demographic devastation of two decades of both war and a major plague epidemic from 541, left the Italian peninsula in a sorry state — one of the darkest chapters of the history of Italy.

Consequently, in the 540s and 550s, the eastern capital was teeming with Roman aristocrats from Italy, who had sought safer grounds during the devastation unleashed on the Italian peninsula.

These Italian-Roman aristocrats were from both sides of the conflict. While the military of the Ostrogoth state was clearly Ostrogoth, the administration had been Roman, and run by Romans on all levels.

When Theodoric arrived in Italy in 489, parts of the elite had taken his side, while others stood with Odoacer. When Belisarius arrived in 535, parts of the elite took his side, while others remained with the Ostrogoths.

During the wars, people had been hurt, betrayed, assassinated and what not. The animosities within the Italian-Roman elite ran very deep, and as many of them found themselves in Constantinople, their enmities from back in Italy weren’t left there.

A distinguished career, until it wasn’t

It’s time to introduce our letter-writer, Flavius Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator.

The Cassiodorus Senator family was probably of Syrian origin, and we have some information of four generations, up to and including Cassiodorus.

They were established in Bruttium, modern-day Calabria, in the first half of the 400s, and had roles in the imperial bureaucracy.

The great-grandfather of Cassiodorus partook in the defences of Italy against the Vandals in 455. His grandfather was sent as ambassador to Attila the Hun during that invasion, probably around 448.

His father had a distinguished career at the court in Ravenna, and was governor of Sicily in 489 when Theodoric arrived in Italy. He handed the province to Theodoric without a fight, which got the family into the good books of the new Ostrogoth rulers.

He became governor of his home province, Bruttium, which besides wealth must have made the family the dominant dynasty in the region. Between 501 and 507, he served as praetorian prefect for Theodoric, the highest position of civil government.

Under his father’s tenure as praetorian prefect, ‘our’ Cassiodorus entered service first as consiliarius — as an advisor to his father — when he was around twenty years old.

In 507, he became quaestor — a kind of legal advisor, who also drafted public documents — a role, which he held until 511. His service was rewarded with a consulate, which at this time was little more than an honorific.

Cassiodorus appears to have been out of office for the next twelve years, until 524. However, he kept writing, and clearly had a role in or around the court in Ravenna. Among other things, he wrote and recited at court a panegyric to Theodoric in 519.

He was not, therefore, retired, away from court, or even out of favour. He simply served Theodoric in other ways than by holding public office.

In 524, Boethius — Roman aristocrat, philosopher, another of the great intellectuals of the period, and possibly a relative of Cassiodorus — was accused of high treason and executed. He had held the office of magister officiorum — master of the offices — which was a very high position in state administration.

His successor in the office was Cassiodorus, which led to the suspicion that Cassiodorus had been behind the accusations, and therefore the downfall and death of Boethius.

Theodoric died in August 526, and Cassiodorus oversaw the transfer of power to his grandson Athalaric, under the guardianship of his daughter Amalasuintha. The following year, Amalasuintha discharged Cassiodorus, for unknown reasons.

Cassiodorus again spent some years without a formal role at court, and little is known of what he did. However, in 533 he was recalled by Amalasuintha, and made praetorian prefect.

The next few years in Ostrogoth politics were particularly messy. Athalaric died in 534, and Amalasuintha ruled alone, but soon made her cousin Theodahad co-ruler. He swiftly deposed and exiled her, and shortly after she was murdered.

The inaction of Theodahad in the face of the invasion of Belisarius in 535, led to a palace coup, where he was deposed and killed. The next king of the Ostrogoths was Witiges, who remained ruler until 540, when he was defeated and captured by Belisarius in Ravenna.

Cassiodorus was praetorian prefect — the highest state official of the kingdom — during all this, so he was clearly there, in the middle of the fight for power and control. It is, however, quite unclear what kind of role he played, if any, in all these palace intrigues.

We don’t know when Cassiodorus left office, and we don’t know whether he stepped down or was discharged. He could have stepped down in late 537, or he could have remained until the fall of Ravenna in 540.

He was definitely still praetorian prefect in late 537, but there are no surviving documents from his hand later than late 537 or early 538, that is, towards the end of the siege of Rome.

Part of the problem is, of course, that the arbiter of which documents have survived and which haven’t, ended up being Cassiodorus himself.

The Variae

After 540, with the end of the first phase of the Gothic Wars, we find Cassiodorus in Constantinople.

He was not formally a prisoner, but it is also difficult to ascertain if he was free to leave.

As mentioned earlier, Constantinople was full of Italian-Roman aristocrats, from both sides of the war. Grievances and enmities of all kinds abounded in the wake of the war.

For Cassiodorus, who had been at the centre of things for half the duration of the Ostrogoth rule in Italy, it was essential to show that he, a Roman aristocrat, had not been aiding and abetting an enemy of Rome.

At stake was not only a possible continued career in imperial administration, but his very life.

He needed the prevailing narrative to be that whatever had happened on the military side in Italy, the administration had been honourable and correct, according to the prevailing Roman values of public life.

Until Belisarius landed in Italy in 535, there had been no armed conflict between the empire and the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The illusion that Italy was still formally a part of the empire could be upheld, as long as Cassiodorus could document that he had not acted against Roman interests.

He also needed to show that he had done everything possible, within his means, after 535, to put an end to the conflict.

Cassiodorus needed to show that he was not an enemy of Rome.

For this purpose, Cassiodorus published a large collection of letters, which he had written during his time in the Ostrogoth administration. Since we’re talking of many hundreds of letters, written over several decades, presumably he managed to bring his entire archive with him, as he moved — or was moved — to Constantinople.

This work — called the Variae epistolae — consists of twelve books, with well over four hundred letters.

It is written in Latin, which was the official language both in Italy and in Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire only later switched to Greek as the legal and administrative language.

Translations

Various translations into English exist.

The first, from 1886, by Thomas Hodgkin, is a selective and condensed translation. Hodgkin was one of the foremost British scholars of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages of his time, but his translation is not precise, and was not intended to be. More than anything else, he paraphrased the letters. It is, however, the only translation in the public domain.

There’s a translation of selected letters by Samuel J.B. Barnish, from 1992. While I suspect our letters are in the selection, due to their importance to the history of Venice, I don’t know if they are, as I haven’t been able to procure a copy of the book here in Italy.

Finally, there’s a complete, unabridged, modern translation of the entire twelve books of the Variae by Professor M. Shane Bjornlie, chair of Classical Studies at the Department of History, Claremont McKenna College in California, published in 2019 by the University of California Press.

Professor Bjornlie has been so kind as to allow me to use his translation, rather than the far more approximative public domain translation by Hodgkin.

The two first letters

The letters regarding the proto-Venetians are in book twelve, as they’re from the end of Cassiodorus’ tenure as praetorian prefect. They are letters 12.22 to 12.24.

The first two letters don’t mention the people of the Venetian lagoons, but they’re important for context, so I’m including them anyway.

The first, Variae 12.22 was written shortly after September 1st, 537.

That date marked the start of a new indiction, which was a Roman nine-year taxation cycle, and the purpose of the letter was to inform the province of Istria around the northern Adriatic Sea of their tax obligations, and instruct them on how to pay their dues.

The province was much of what is now Friuli, the peninsula of Istria and parts of what is now the coastal parts of Slovenia and Croatia.

It is also in the middle of the Siege of Rome, with the consequences that entailed, such as increased expenses for the war effort, and decreased tax revenues from the lost territories in the south.

This is a fairly long letter, and it gives a good impression of the bureaucratic-literary style of the time.

Praefectus Praetorio Senator to the Provincials of Istria

1. Public expenses, fluctuating with diverse variations throughout the year, can be held in check by this means: if the appropriateness of demands accords with the yield of each region. Certainly, collection is easy there, where profit is more bountiful. For if the indication of sterile poverty is ignored, then the province is harmed and the desired result is not obtained. Consequently, we have learned by the attestation of travelers that the province of Istria, so named with praise from three outstanding crops, rejoices in fertility this year, being laden by divine gift with wine, oil, and grain. And so, let the mentioned commodities, given in payment of taxes in the amount of tot solidi, be charged to you for the current first indiction; but the remainder we leave on behalf of the customary expenses of a loyal province.
2. But since an amount greater than what we had stipulated must be obtained from you, we have also sent tot solidi from our treasury, so that the necessary goods may be productively gathered without loss to you. For often, when you are compelled to sell to strangers, you are accustomed to experience a loss, especially at a time when the foreign purchaser is suddenly absent and it is rare to receive gold when you know merchants are not on hand. But how much better it is to obey your rulers than to provide for distant people, and to pay taxes with crops, than to bear the contempt of purchasers.
3. We have caused, moreover, from a love of justice, what you would want to suggest to us, since, while we are not burdened by furnishing ships, we would not adulterate the price. For your region is situated the closest to us across the gulf of the Ionian Sea, covered with olive groves, adorned with grain fields, abundant in vines, where all crops flow forth in optimum fertility as though from three teats of surpassingly rich generosity. Not without warrant is the region called the Campania of Ravenna, the storehouse of the royal city, an exceedingly pleasurable and delightful retreat.
4. Being set in the north, it enjoys an admirable commingling of climate. It even has its own Baiaes of a sort—I do not claim this recklessly—where the turbulent sea enters inlets of the shore, calming it to a lovely surface with the quality of a lake. These places also furnish much fish sauce and they glory in the bounty of fish. Not one Avernus is located here. Conspicuous are the numerous Neptuniae, in which oysters spawn everywhere unbidden with even lax diligence. Thus, it is proven that there is neither effort in nourishing nor uncertainty in catching with these delicacies.
5. You may perceive extensive residences scattered far and wide, shining like pearls, so that here it may reveal what kind of discernment was had by the ancestors of this province, which is known to be adorned with such buildings. Moreover, added to the shore is the most beautiful arrangement of islands, which are positioned with lovely utility, both warding ships from danger and enriching cultivators with great fertility. The region clearly restores the attendants of our comitatus, it adorns the imperium of Italy, it feeds leading men with delicacies and the humble with its payment of stores, and what is produced there is possessed almost entirely in the royal city. Let the loyal province offer its abundance more willingly now; let it obey fully when it is desired, since it used to produce gladly when it was called upon the least.
6. But lest any uncertainty should proceed from our commands, we have sent with the present directive the most proven gentleman, Laurentius, approved by us in great toil for the republic. Thus, according to the brief attached below, he may unhesitatingly accomplish what he knows to be enjoined upon public expenses. Now procure what has been ordered. For you make public service loyal, when you freely undertake a command.
7. But I shall publish the prices determined for you on a subsequent opportunity, when the bearer of the present letter has estimated by sent report the measure of your harvest. For nothing can be appraised for taxes justly, unless the amount of resources can be clearly investigated. It is indeed an unfair assessor who produces a judgment in ignorance and one who decrees without deliberation is shown to be aware of his own bad character.

In short, Cassiodorus reminded the leaders of the Province of Istria of their fiscal duties towards the centre, instructed them to pay in kind rather than in cash to accelerate the process, and, as the centre needed more resources that what was due in taxes, they wanted to buy some more, at fixed prices to be determined.

The letter clearly shows that it was a time of emergency for the government in Ravenna. They needed these goods badly, and showered praise on the province, as sugar on the bitter pill.

To make sure everything was delivered and purchased as required, Cassiodorus sent a trusted official named Laurentius to handle all the transactions.

The letter has clearly been edited before publishing in the Variae, as the exact amounts in question have been left out, and replaced with the generic tot solidi, which means something like “a certain amount of money”.

What else has been changed, we cannot know. The letters in the Variae are often full of literary flourishes, long-winded descriptions of places and landscapes, and even philosophical and religious discussions.

Commencing to the second letter, which is quite short.

It is a letter with instructions, and of authorisation to Laurentius, mentioned in the first letter, both to the leaders of the province of Istria and to the treasury in Ravenna, where he needed to get funds for the additional purchases.

Praefectus Praetorio Senator to Laurentius, Vir Experientissimus

1. The deliberation of a magistrate ought to bring proven men to public service, so that it would be easy to satisfy what is clearly needed from the insufficiency of the time. A single person is able to extricate himself from any manner of difficulties in a period of plenty; it is a task for carefully selected public officials, when the pressure of hardship prevails. And so, we order your proven ability, being most pleasing by your devotion to our company, to hasten to the province of Istria, so that you would procure supplies of wine, oil, and grain equivalent to tot solidi in taxes; but with another tot solidi, which you will claim from our treasury, you will hasten to buy as much from merchants as from the landowners, just as the requisition prepared by the numerarii has instructed you.
2. Therefore, now, raise your spirit for what must be obeyed, you who have been approved for such services by unhesitating selection. Let the example of your first responsibility admonish you, since it is exceedingly egregious for a veteran to fail in his duty, when as a recruit he was known to err under no circumstance. Such a man, however, by honesty toward us, will open himself to favors well beyond the wealth of the aforementioned commodities, so that we may trust what reports indicate concerning you, and so that we may establish as standard practice what neither harms the provincials nor is able to burden public expenses.

Again, we have the urgency and references to times of scarcity. This is the war looming over the government.

The numerarii are accountants or book-keepers.

Otherwise, this letter just repeats several of the same points of the first letter.

The letter to the maritimes

The last of the three letters was for the “tribunes of the maritimes”, and this is the source almost all Histories of Venice cite, even if they usually pick just a few lines.

This letter is longer than the two first. I’m going to read it in its entirety first, and then we’ll unpack the salient parts afterwards.

Again, this is the first written source we have to the lives of the early inhabitants of the Venetian lagoons, so it’s difficult to overstate the historical importance of this document.

Praefectus Praetorio Senator to the Tribuni Maritimorum

1. We previously determined in a published command that Istria should gladly direct to the court at Ravenna the commodities of wine, oil, and grain, of which it enjoys a generous abundance in the current year. But you, who have numerous ships on the border of the province, will provide them with equally pleasing dependability, so that you may strive to convey with speed what has been prepared there for delivery. Indeed, the high regard will be the same for both parties upon accomplishing this, when one sundered from the other would not permit the work to be completed. Therefore, be ready for a neighboring province, you who often cross boundless distances.
2. You, who sail through your own homeland, travel, after a fashion, to your own reception. It also happens, to your advantage, that another route is available to you, one calm with perpetual safety. For when the sea is closed by savage winds, the way through the most pleasant river courses is opened to you. Your keels are not alarmed at rough gales; they trace the shore with great fortune, and what regularly dashes against the seas knows not how to flounder. At a distance, you would suppose the ships were carried upon meadows, when it happens their channel is not visible. Ships that are accustomed to stay afloat with rigging are drawn by cables, and by changed condition, men assist their own ships on foot; they draw the maidens of transport without toil and they use the more secure steps of sailors out of fear of the sails.
3. It is a pleasure to relate how we have seen your homes situated. The Venetians, once greatly famed for celebrated men, border Ravenna and the Po to the south, enjoying the pleasantness of the Adriatic shores to the east, where, in alternation, the withdrawal of the tide now closes, and the returning flood now opens, access to the sea. Here, a home for you is after the fashion of aquatic birds. For you are now perceived as land-locked, and then as an islander, so that you would consider your homes to be more like the Cyclades, where you behold the appearance of places change suddenly.
4. Indeed, similar to the islands, homes are seen scattered far into open waters made by nature, but which the ingenuity of men colonized. For here, the solidity of earth is accumulated by mooring pliant osiers, and there is no uncertainty in such a fragile rampart opposing the marine surge, when it is evident that the shallows of the coast are unable to thrust heaps of waves forward and waters not supported by the assistance of depth are carried without force.
5. Accordingly, there is one source of wealth for the inhabitants, so that they may be glutted on fish alone. There, poverty dines with wealth in equality. One food nourishes all, one dwelling shelters all alike, the inhabitants know not how to envy ancestral homes and, abiding under these conditions, they avoid a vice for which the entire world appears guilty.
6. On the contrary, the sum of your rivalry is in the salt works. Instead of plows and pruning hooks, you roll grinding stones; from this, all your profit is produced, when in this very industry, you possess what you do not make. In this, a kind of dietary coin is struck. Every wave is favorable to your craft. Some are able to seek gold less, there is no one who does not desire to acquire salt, and rightly, when each meal is owed to this, which makes the meal satisfying.
7. Prepare with diligent care, then, the ships that you tether to your walls in the manner of animals, so that, when that most proven gentleman Laurentius, who has been sent to procure commodities, appears to advise you, you will hasten to set upon your task, to the extent that you, who are able to select an advantageous route on the basis of the quality of weather, would not delay necessary payments with difficulties.

Let’s go through it bit for bit.

Address

The letter was addressed to the tribunes of the maritimes.

Professor Bjornlie reads that as “masters of the ships”, while other translations offer other interpretations. Tribunes could also be state officials, with mixed military and civilian functions, or leaders of the local communities.

Whichever way we interpret those two words, it tells us that Cassiodorus had somebody, who was in a position of authority, to whom he could address the letter.

The maritime communities consequently had an organisation, a stratification and a hierarchy, which goes counter to what Cassiodorus himself wrote later in the same letter, that they all ate the same food, lived in the same kind of houses, and therefore knew no envy.

Paragraph 1

But you, who have numerous ships on the border of the province, will provide them with equally pleasing dependability, so that you may strive to convey with speed what has been prepared there for delivery. Indeed, the high regard will be the same for both parties upon accomplishing this, when one sundered from the other would not permit the work to be completed.

The main ask of the maritimes — the people of the lagoons — was that they transported the wine, oil and grain, mentioned in the earlier letters, from Istria to Ravenna.

The maritimes don’t have to supply anything themselves. Cassiodorus is clear that the two parts of the task are equivalent. If Istria absolved its duty supplying the goods, the Venetians paid their dues with the transport to Ravenna.

Other letters in the Variae, from one or two years earlier, described a natural calamity, which clouded the sun, changed the rainfall and therefore damaged the harvests in the province of the Venetians. They had consequently been exempted from taxation, as there was little to tax. This might be the reason why the only ask here is their labour.

The province of Istria, with its abundant harvest, paid the taxes in commodities, while the Venetians paid by transporting the goods from Istria and Friuli in the north to Ravenna to the south.

Paragraph 2

1. You, who sail through your own homeland, travel, after a fashion, to your own reception.

Just as Cassiodorus tried to make the burden placed on the provincials of Istria, seem just and reasonable, here too he underlined that the maritimes didn’t have to leave their home turf to do what was asked of them.

They would pick up goods north of their lands, and move them south, without any need for long, dangerous journeys to little known lands.

It also happens, to your advantage, that another route is available to you, one calm with perpetual safety. For when the sea is closed by savage winds, the way through the most pleasant river courses is opened to you. …

At a distance, you would suppose the ships were carried upon meadows, when it happens their channel is not visible. Ships that are accustomed to stay afloat with rigging are drawn by cables, and by changed condition, men assist their own ships on foot; they draw the maidens of transport without toil and they use the more secure steps of sailors out of fear of the sails.

The lagoons were far larger and wider in antiquity.

There were uninterrupted lagoons from the estuary of the Po river in the south, almost to the ancient Roman capital of the north-east, Aquileia, and to Trieste, with the fertile lands of Friuli behind.

All the rivers of the mainland crossed these lagoons on their way to the sea, creating a continuous network of inland canals, basins and riverbeds, which allowed for long-distance transport on boat, without ever entering the open sea.

This is what Cassiodorus alluded to with “another route … one calm with perpetual safety”.

Likewise, south of the Po estuary, lagoons extended southwards, past Comacchio to Ravenna and beyond.

The reason why Ravenna was chosen as capital of the Western Empire, and later of the Kingdom of Theodoric, was that it was easily defensible. Fifteen hundred years ago, Ravenna sat on a lido, with the sea on one side, and a lagoon on the other.

The city is now eight kilometres inland, but still has a harbour. Sediments from the Po river have created a delta protruding into the sea, in a way it didn’t back then, and the coastline in front of Ravenna has shifted eight kilometres outwards.

While this slow process advanced over many centuries, the people of Ravenna always kept the canal from the sea to the city open. It is now eight kilometres long, and there too, you can see modern commercial freighters, apparently sailing through the countryside, just as Cassiodorus wrote about the ships of the Venetians in the meadows.

As an aside, the city of Adria, which has later lent its name to the Adriatic Sea, was once an important Roman naval base. It is now twelve kilometres inland.

Geography is not immutable.

Back to the letter.

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1. It is a pleasure to relate how we have seen your homes situated.

Apparently, Cassiodorus had visited the lagoons himself, which is another testament that the area was not a worthless backwater inhabited only by poor people, not even in the early 500s.

The Venetians, once greatly famed for celebrated men,

Here we have the word “Venetia”. It does not mean the current city, which didn’t yet exist, but the entire area inhabited by the Veneti people, both mainland and lagoons.

I’m not entirely sure who the “celebrated men” were, but it could be a reference to the city of Aquileia, which had been the main Roman city in NE Italy, and capital of the earlier Roman region of Regio X Venetia et Histria. The city was, however, sacked and devastated by Attila in 452 — less than a century earlier — and it never recovered its past importance.

Cassiodorus was a very religious man, and the first bishop of Aquileia was Hermagoras, according to legend chosen by St. Mark and invested in Rome by St. Peter himself. He is the first of the apostolic succession of the patriarchs of Aquileia and Grado.

The church of Aquileia therefore goes back to the very earliest times of Christianity, which might have been important to Cassiodorus, both as a devout Christian and as a scholar and historian.

Returning to our letter, we have a discussion of the tide.

…, where, in alternation, the withdrawal of the tide now closes, and the returning flood now opens, access to the sea.

The tide is still a factor in the daily lives of the lagoon dwellers today, and it was absolutely dominant until the advent of engines on boats. If you’re moving heavy stuff on a rowed boat, you won’t do that against the tide more than once. Consequently, everything in the lagoon lived and moved with the rhythm of the rising and falling tides, well into the 1900s.

Here, a home for you is after the fashion of aquatic birds.

Aquatic birds have to nest above the high watermark, and the houses of the maritimes were no different. They would either be located on the higher grounds, where such existed, or be houses or huts on stilts.

For you are now perceived as land-locked, and then as an islander, so that you would consider your homes to be more like the Cyclades, where you behold the appearance of places change suddenly.

The Cyclades is a reference to ancient Greek mythology. Zeus had — as was his wont — an extramarital affair with Leto, who got pregnant. Zeus’ wife, Hera, enraged, forbade her to give birth anywhere on firm land. Leto asked the god of the sea, Poseidon, for help, and he created Delos in the Cyclades as a floating island, tethered to the bottom of the sea. Here, Leto gave birth to Artemis and Apollo.

As a floating island, Delos was therefore supposed to move up and down with the tide, that is, change suddenly.

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1. Indeed, similar to the islands, homes are seen scattered far into open waters made by nature, but which the ingenuity of men colonized. For here, the solidity of earth is accumulated by mooring pliant osiers, and there is no uncertainty in such a fragile rampart opposing the marine surge, when it is evident that the shallows of the coast are unable to thrust heaps of waves forward and waters not supported by the assistance of depth are carried without force.

The marsh islands in the lagoons are mud and sand, and therefore prone to erosion by the waves, the tide and the winds.

To prevent the erosion from undermining the houses, fences of wicker were used, placed around the islands at low tide, to fortify the edge of the islands. Even if the barrier wasn’t very sturdy, it was enough because the shallow waters of the lagoons don’t allow large waves.

Such wicker barriers can still be found around the Venetian lagoon today, even if they have mostly been replaced by wooden palisades or stone walls.

Cassiodorus didn’t describe the houses themselves, but they probably had walls of wicker or wood, and roofs of reeds. The fishermen in the lagoons have used such huts even until recent times.

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Cassiodorus then moved on to the economy of the lagoons.

1. Accordingly, there is one source of wealth for the inhabitants, so that they may be glutted on fish alone. There, poverty dines with wealth in equality. One food nourishes all, one dwelling shelters all alike, the inhabitants know not how to envy ancestral homes and, abiding under these conditions, they avoid a vice for which the entire world appears guilty.

To return to the start of the letter, to whom would Cassiodorus address the letter, if the lagoon communities were as egalitarian as he described them?

It is therefore quite unlikely that everybody ate the same food and lived in the same kind of houses. After all, what is the point of wealth, if poverty and wealth dines in equality? The very purpose of wealth is inequality.

The lagoon settlements would certainly be poor, if compared to the grandeur of imperial Ravenna, where Cassiodorus likely spent most of his time, so he might have perceived them as all the same. Alternatively, he exaggerated the relative poverty of the communities, as to depict the recipients of the letter as good and virtuous people.

Cassiodorus, as the top official of the kingdom, was certainly more powerful than the recipients of the letter, but he was also the one asking, in a situation of crisis and scarcity. He needed them to do as asked, and a bit of flattery certainly wouldn’t hurt.

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1. On the contrary, the sum of your rivalry is in the salt works. Instead of plows and pruning hooks, you roll grinding stones; from this, all your profit is produced, when in this very industry, you possess what you do not make. In this, a kind of dietary coin is struck. Every wave is favorable to your craft. Some are able to seek gold less, there is no one who does not desire to acquire salt, and rightly, when each meal is owed to this, which makes the meal satisfying.

We cannot live without salt, and in the past, it was one of very few food preservatives available. Salt was, therefore, one of the first commodities of trade, and for the people, who controlled a source of salt, it could be a steady source of income.

The shallow expanses of the lagoons were perfect for extracting salt. Small areas were closed off using the lagoon mud, water poured inside throughout summer, and in the autumn, thick slabs of salt could be collected from the dried out salt pads.

These slabs of salt had to be ground before the salt could be sold, hence the reference to “grinding stones”.

This was an important source of income for Venice far into the Middle Ages, and wars were fought over the trade in salt.

That it was equally important in the times of Cassiodorus, is evident from his choice of words. Terms like “all your profits”, “coin is struck”, and the comparison to gold all tell us that salt extraction was big business also in the 500s.

It is not unlikely, that salt was one of the reasons for moving into the lagoons in the first place. Fishing could keep people alive, but salt could make them rich.

Only a small part of the salt was consumed locally. The rest had to be commercialised, which meant trade and ships, and Cassiodorus started by noting that the maritimes had numerous ships.

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The last paragraph reiterates the request for transportation, refers to the official Laurentius, and then this note:

the ships that you tether to your walls in the manner of animals

There were, therefore, already houses built along canals, much like in the Venice we know today. Obviously, the houses were much smaller, probably made of wood, clay and reeds, but as Cassiodorus had already mentioned ships with sails and rigging, these ships were probably not just rowing boats, but something larger, that is, sea faring.

The early lagoon settlements

So what image did Cassiodorus paint of the maritimes, the people of the lagoon?

They lived in scattered settlements, on islands, whose edge had been reinforced with wicker fences, and they tied their ships to the walls, just as people on the mainland did with their beasts of burden.

They fished for food, extracted salt for money, and had numerous ships, so they could transport the taxes of an entire province, paid in kind, over a distance of a couple of hundred kilometres.

So fishermen, salt extractors and merchants, on a scale which went beyond local material needs.

Somebody would own the ships and the salt pads, and have slaves, serfs and workers there, so it is very unlikely that society was as egalitarian as Cassiodorus depicted.

Nevertheless, the wealthiest of the maritimes were probably far from being as rich as the aristocratic elite in Ravenna and Rome, with whom Cassiodorus worked and socialised. They owned large agricultural estates, and possessed a level of riches the lagoon people couldn’t match, at least not yet.

Bibliography

• Bjornlie, Michael Shane. Politics and tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople : a study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527-554.. Cambridge Cambridge university press, 2013. 🔗
• Bjornlie, M. Shane. Variae: The Complete Translation. University of California Press, 2019. 🔗
• Hodgkin, Thomas. The letters of Cassiodorus : being a condensed translation of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus senator. London, 1886. 🔗