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White Elephant Gifts: Classicism in Ostrogothic Policy and in Variae 10.30

Abstract:Through a close reading of Cassiodorus’s Variae 10.30, this paper sets the ideology and cultural program of Ostrogothic Italy against a social background that encouraged resistance to both of these on the part of “Romans.” Variae 10.30, ostensibly a request to repair a group of elephant statues in Rome, is for the most part a digression on the natural history of the elephant. Analysis of the sources of Cassiodorus’s lore suggests that this discussion presents a parable for Ostrogothic rule in Italy, according to which the Goths provide protection for a traditional Roman way of life in which non-Gothic Italians will continue to engage. The ideological character of this parable, in which “Goth” and “Roman” alike are suppositious categories, is clear. But the Italian elites of Cassiodorus’s time were no longer interested in acting like “Romans,” and so the ideology expressed in Variae 10.30 met with resistance—resistance of which the letter itself is evidence. This resistance helps explain the “defection” of many Roman elites from Gothic overlordship upon the Byzantine invasion of Italy in 535.