Politics And Tradition Between Rome Ravenna And Constantinople

This article discusses the political and cultural life of the Roman world in the sixth century AD, and how the Variae of Cassiodorus can be used to understand this. The author argues that the Variae cannot be understood apart from the themes of political discourse in Constantinople at the time, and this provides new insights into the text's rhetorical purpose and into the political and cultural context that informed its content.

The Variae of Cassiodorus have long been valued as an epistolary collection offering a window into political and cultural life in a so-called barbarian successor state in sixth-century Italy. However, this study is the first to treat them as more than an assemblage of individual case studies and to analyse the collection's wider historical context. M. Shane Bjornlie highlights the insights the Variae provide into early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs and the influence of the political and military turbulence of Justinian's reconquest of Italy and of political and cultural exchanges between Italy and Constantinople. The book also explores how Cassiodorus revised, updated and assembled the Variae for publication and what this reveals about his motives for publishing an epistolary record and for his own political life at a crucial period of transformation for the Roman world. Review: 'M. Shane Bjornlie explores with a depth of analysis unparalleled in previous studies of Cassiodorus ... in his most original contribution, [he] argues that the Variae cannot be understood apart from the themes of political discourse then current in Constantinople, where oblique criticisms of Justinian's autocratic style of rule filled the air. By treating the Variae as a sophisticated literary enterprise written to salvage the tenuous worth of northern Italian palatines during the regime change heralded by the Gothic Wars of Justinian, Bjornlie provides us with new insights both into the rhetorical purpose of this well-known text and into the polemical context that informed its content.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review