LONDON: HENRY FROWDE
AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1886.
[All rights reserved]
Oxford
PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
[Transcriber's Note: This e-text contains a number of words and phrasesin ancient Greek. In the original text, some of the Greek characters havediacritical marks which do not display properly in some browsers, such asInternet Explorer. In order to make this e-text as accessible as possible,the diacritical marks have been omitted, except that the rough-breathingmark is here represented by an apostrophe at the beginning of the word.All text in Greek has a mouse-hover transliteration, e.g.,καλος.]
The abstract of the 'Variae' of Cassiodorus which I now offer to thenotice of historical students, belongs to that class of work whichProfessor Max Müller happily characterised when he entitled two of hisvolumes 'Chips from a German Workshop.' In the course of mypreparatory reading, before beginning the composition of the third andfourth volumes of my book on 'Italy and Her Invaders,' I found itnecessary to study very attentively the 'Various Letters' ofCassiodorus, our best and often our only source of information, forthe character and the policy of the great Theodoric. The notes whichin this process were accumulated upon my hands might, I hoped, bewoven into one long chapter on the Ostrogothic government of Italy.When the materials were collected, however, they were so manifold, soperplexing, so full of curious and unexpected detail, that I quitedespaired of ever succeeding in the attempt to group them into oneharmonious and artistic picture. Frankly, therefore, renouncing a taskwhich is beyond my powers, I offer my notes for the perusal of the fewreaders who may care to study the mutual reactions[Pg vi] of the Roman andthe Teutonic mind upon one another in the Sixth Century, and I askthese to accept the artist's assurance, 'The curtain is the picture.'
It will be seen that I only profess to give an abstract, not a fulltranslation of the letters. There is so much repetition and such alavish expenditure of words in the writings of Cassiodorus, that theylend themselves very readily to the work of the abbreviator. Of coursethe longer letters generally admit of greater relative reduction inquantity than the shorter ones, but I think it may be said that on anaverage the letters have lost at least half their bulk in my hands. Onany important point the real student will of course refuse to acceptmy condensed rendering, and will go straight to the fountain-head. Ihope, however, that even students may occasionally derive the samekind of assistance from my labours which an astronomer derives fromthe humble instrument called the 'finder' in a great observatory.
A few important letters have been translated, to the best of myability, verbatim. In the not infrequent