Venantius Opilio
Venantius Opilio (flourit 523-534) was was a Roman politician during the reign of Theodoric the Great. Holding the consulship as the junior colleague of emperor Justin I in 524, he is best known as one of the three men Boethius claimed in his De consolatione philosophiae provided evidence of his treason against witnessed king Theodoric, an act which led to Boethius' imprisonment and death.[1]
Life
According to one of the letters written by Cassiodorus, Opilio was the brother of Cyprianus, and brother-in-law to Basilius;[2] this Basilius who is commonly identified with the Basilius who appears in two of Cassiodorus' letters as a accused of practicing black magic.[3] According to Boethius, Cyprianus was the referandarius who accused him of treasonous correspondence with the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, while Basilius was another one of the three who provided evidence of that crime.
Boethius alleges that Opilio, along with the last of the three witnesses, Gaudentius, had been banished for fraud by Theodoric, and had taken sanctuary within Ravenna, when the two of them denounced Boethius.[1] However, John Moorhead has listed a number of sources which portray Opilio in a far different light. He received two letters from Magnus Felix Ennodius, the bishop of Pavia, which were probably written in the first decade of the sixth century (Epistulae I.22; V.3); neither contains anything disreputable about Opilio. In 524 he was appointed consul. The Ostrogothic monarchs selected him in 526 to announce the accession of Theoderic's successor to the inhabitants of Liguria in 526. A few years afterwards he was picked to accompany the patrician Liberius on an embassy to Constantinople. Moorhead notes that Opilio also appears to have been in good standing with the contemporary church: in 529 he was a lay signatory at the [[Council of Orange#Second Council of Orange|Second Council of Orange],[4] and in 534 was included among the addressees of a circular on christology distributed by Pope John II]. The last item Moorhead provides is an inscription from Padua suggesting Opilio had constructed a number of churches. "We may," observes Moorhead, "therefore say that Opilio lived the life of a typical Roman noble and was accepted as such by Ennodius, Faustus, Liberius, Pope John II and the Ostrogothic government."[5]
His life following his diplomatic mission to the Imperial court is unknown.
Notes
- ^ a b De consolatione I.14.3; translated by V.E. Watts, Boethius: The consolation of philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 42
- ^ Variae VIII. 16; paraphrase by Thomas Hodgkin, Letters of Cassiodorus (London 1886)
- ^ Variae IV.22, IV.23; the first is translated by S.J.B. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Liverpool: University Press, 1992), pp. 77f
- ^ Another signatory was the Patrician Liberius.
- ^ Moorhead, "Boethius and Romans in Ostrogothic Service", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 27 (1978), p. 610