Difference between revisions of "Excerpt from the Chronica of F.M.A. Cassiodorus Senator"

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   From the Chronica of F. M. A. Cassiodorus Senator 

   [Cassiodorus by his own account a teenager in 502, so his participation in the events that 
   follow is suspect.]
   
   …And in the year of our Lord 502, the ninth year of the glorious reign of Flavius     
   Theodoricus, a clownish chieftain arrived from the northern province of Britannia with 
   a small retinue. No difference could be greater than that between this barbaric oaf, whose 
   Latin was abominable and who never used the right spoon at dinner, and our glorious king, 
   whose very name means Gift of God! [Cassiodorus mentions this spurious etymology about a 
   thousand times in this work.] This foreigner, whose name was Ursurus had a strange story 
   to tell, that he had sailed far to the west, to a land he called Annofina. I told him that 
   the proper name for the land was Hibernia, which occasioned a good laugh all around; but 
   Ursurus, who styled himself a king, insisted that he had sailed west of Hibernia, past 
   which there is no land, for many days.  There his fabulous navy, which had subdued, he 
   claimed, so many foreign lands in the north, met with disaster, for they faced strange and 
   savage people, and even monsters, of which they slew many, but were themselves slain 
   worse; and it was a bitter defeat for Ursurus' forces. The kinglet's grasp of mathematics 
   was tenuous at best, for all he could say was that they left his hamlet "outnumbering the 
   bees in the trees"; he did manage to specify that only seven had returned from the voyage, 
   he himself, his seneschal, a butcher's boy, another king (so-called), a lion tamer, a one-
   armed man, and a squire—but perhaps seven was as high as he could count! He always had 
   food in his beard! 
   
   It must be conceded, in the spirit of Christian charity, that this king so-called was a 
   doughty warrior, and furthermore he possessed him of a sword that was rather well 
   proportioned, with a pretty scabbard of iridescent hues.  His retinue was made up of 
   strange and savage men, whose names I never learned for they pained the tongue, save 
   one's, and he a pretty little boy named Gavanis with hair like the sun, who, despite his 
   youth, was as quick with a sword as any legonnaire, and not a few Getae.  He snarled at me 
   and batted away my hands and told me that Annofina was real, and was the very land of the 
   devil, a pretty little fantasy as boys might have. 
   
   But Ursurus thought it no fantasy, and wanted his benevolent mightiness The Gift of God to 
   organize an expedition against this mythical land across the sea!  I explained to him, 
   with no small amount of gentle irony, that Great Theodoricus had already conquered Rome 
   for God's sake, and hardly needed to prove himself against bogeymen or Hibernians.  
   
   Ursurus would not take no for an answer. and even sought an audience with The Gift of God 
   himself; he had the effrontety to offer to take on in single combat any Roman who would 
   dare face him.  We laughed at this, and explained that someone might get hurt; and playing 
   with knives is a game for boys.  Ursurus, king manquè, did not like these words, but 
   frankly, what was he going to do?  Flavius Theodoricus and his manly Getae would be more 
   than a match for the delusional fool.  He had muscle, but surely no real skill beyond 
   savagery, no tactics beyond ferocity, no technique at all. Ursus spoke of monsters with 
   many tentacles, for the ignoramus had never before seen an octopus, and had greatly 
   exaggerated its size; he spoke of men that were part beast, pretending he meant other than 
   Hibernians; he spoke of a great threat to Christendom as though this were news.  We all 
   pointed out that Persia was to the east.  "Even Persia will suffer if they come," the 
   hairy joke intoned. But of course even Persia is nothing to fear, for prophecies and signs 
   have conclusively proved that Persia will fall in little over a hundred years, and forever 
   this time: doubtless to our might, and the might of the Getae (technically Christian as 
   they are, praise God!).  We are more worried bout heretics; and so we quizzed the 
   barbarian about the Trinity until his poor little head spun.  He freely admitted to 
   consorting with wizards, who for various reasons he had left at home, but the mirth 
   engendered by the ignorant way he confessed to enough crimes to send him to the stake 
   twelvefold was so fine that we did not bother to prosecute him. One may as well seek 
   heresy in the babbling of an infant, or then pretty shapes of the clouds!
   
   As I have mentioned earlier: only three years before, Christendom had been afflicted with 
   two Holy Fathers.  The followers of St. Peter are a great blessing on the world, of 
   course, but some things, like chromosomes, are not made better by having an extra one 
   [Cassiodonis' actual simile deals with humors, but the translator has modernized it].  The 
   cardinals could not come to an agreement to fix their error, and the weighings-in of a 
   certain Monophysite heretic who styled himself the emperor in Constantinople did not help 
   matters.  Finally, in his wisdom, The Gift of God stepped in and appointed Symmachus Holy 
   Father over Laurentius, and all was as it should have been, for a while.  But then a 
   troublemaking senator accused His Holiness of fornication, as though the Lord would have 
   wanted his representative on earth not to blow off a little steam every once in a 
   while.  It wasn't even sodomy!  Furthermore Symmachus was a convert from paganism, and 
   needed a little leeway, which Laurentius' followers were suddenly unwilling to grant. His 
   Holiness himself refused to be tried, saying no earthly court had jurisdiction over him; 
   and while this claim was upheld by the cardinals, it angered His Majesty Theodoricus 
   enough that he threw his weight behind a newly jockeying Laurentius.  By the time Ursurus 
   arrived in Rome, the place was in chaos, with two popes firing off contradictory bulls and 
   no one sure who the schismatic was.  Ursurus, unblessed as we are with the verdict of 
   history, attempted to ingratiate himself with the antipope Laurentius, and his apparent 
   success with the new pretender encouraged him to linger in Rome as Laurentius gave what he 
   was best at giving: hollow promises. And so we had to endure this dux bellorum loitering 
   and begging in vain for The Gift of God and adding to his pathetic claims the claim that 
   the so-called Pope supported him. He even claimed descent from the Riotimus, whom he 
   called by the risible sobriquet Wineskin Almost-a-Dragon, a onetime ally of Rome, little 
   thinking that the Riotimus fought against the Getae. He was still not permitted into 
   Ravenna. 
   
   The circus added another ring when, after months of putting up with the puling of the 
   smelly little man, a payim arrived on the scene. His Latin was abominable as well, but he 
   seemed to speak Greek tolerably, if you consider that an achievement.  He had even had the 
   temerity to grant (I dare not say christen) himself a Greek name, and he styled himself 
   Palamedes.  His skin was dusky and his dress quite literally outlandish.  Like the 
   Britannians, he wore his beard long, so long that it curled at the point. You'd think 
   people bristling with blades, as they always were, would take the time to use them, for 
   not everyone looks as smart in a beard as The Gift of God.  This so-called Palamedes, for 
   his barbaric name, something like Quabarius Hadra, is so ludicrous that I can scarcely 
   endite it for the spasms of levity that rack my body, had heard Ursurus' fairy tale in 
   distant Palestina and found it so persuasive that he left his (doubtless) six wives and 
   seventy-seven children and fled to civilization.  Some bumpkins will fall for any tall 
   story, and, once we realized how naive the poor fellow was, we all had a jolly time giving 
   him phony directions and serving feces in his soup until after a few hours the crybaby 
   spoilsport stopped talking to us altogether.  But he plotted and skulked with Ursurus; who 
   was alarmed to find The Gift of God and The Servant of the Servants of God reconciled, and 
   although Laurentius clung to the Lateran Palace, still the writing was on the wall. 
   Perhaps the grubby little foreigner decided that one ignorant savage of an ally is better 
   than none; and so turning on the heel of his moth-eaten boot, the latter-day Palamedes and 
   the pathetic little king-thing fled back to Britannia, where such antics as to which they 
   are accustomed are given credence by the yokels.  If Ursurus, or his pretend equites, had 
   a tail it would have been planted firmly between their collective legs.  Whether the 
   monkey Palamedes had a tail or not I did not get a chance to ascertain which is my only 
   regret about the matter. 
   
   Even after he left, the memory of Ursurus provided a watchword for folly and gauchery that 
   persisted in table-talk until that clown A. M. S. Boethius got his eyes torn out in a most 
   comical fashion. . .