The Letters of Cassiodorus

The Letters of Cassiodorus, by

Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator) This eBook
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Title: The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of
The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator
Author: Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
Translator: Thomas Hodgkin
Release Date: June 15, 2006 [EBook #18590]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS

HODGKIN
Oxford
PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

THE
LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS
BEING
A CONDENSED TRANSLATION OF THE VARIAE EPISTOLAE
OF MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS SENATOR
With an Introduction
BY
THOMAS HODGKIN
FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; HON. D.C.L.
OF DURHAM UNIVERSITY AUTHOR OF 'ITALY AND HER
INVADERS'
LONDON: HENRY FROWDE AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER
ROW, E.C.
1886.
[All rights reserved]

PREFACE.
The abstract of the 'Variae' of Cassiodorus which I now offer to the
notice of historical students, belongs to that class of work which

Professor Max Müller happily characterised when he entitled two of his
volumes 'Chips from a German Workshop.' In the course of my
preparatory reading, before beginning the composition of the third and
fourth volumes of my book on 'Italy and Her Invaders,' I found it
necessary to study very attentively the 'Various Letters' of Cassiodorus,
our best and often our only source of information, for the character and
the policy of the great Theodoric. The notes which in this process were
accumulated upon my hands might, I hoped, be woven into one long
chapter on the Ostrogothic government of Italy. When the materials
were collected, however, they were so manifold, so perplexing, so full
of curious and unexpected detail, that I quite despaired of ever
succeeding in the attempt to group them into one harmonious and
artistic picture. Frankly, therefore, renouncing a task which is beyond
my powers, I offer my notes for the perusal of the few readers who may
care to study the mutual reactions of the Roman and the Teutonic mind
upon one another in the Sixth Century, and I ask these 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 full
translation of the letters. There is so much repetition and such a lavish
expenditure of words in the writings of Cassiodorus, that they lend
themselves very readily to the work of the abbreviator. Of course the
longer letters generally admit of greater relative reduction in quantity
than the shorter ones, but I think it may be said that on an average the
letters have lost at least half their bulk in my hands. On any important
point the real student will of course refuse to accept my condensed
rendering, and will go straight to the fountain-head. I hope, however,
that even students may occasionally derive the same kind of assistance
from my labours which an astronomer derives from the humble
instrument called the 'finder' in a great observatory.
A few important letters have been translated, to the best of my ability,
verbatim. In the not infrequent instances where I have been unable to
extract any intelligible meaning, on grammatical principles, from the
words of my author, I have put in the text the nearest approximation
that I could discover to his meaning, and placed the unintelligible
words in a note, hoping that my readers may be more fortunate in their

interpretation than I have been.
With the usual ill-fortune of authors, just as my last sheet was passing
through the press I received from Italy a number of the 'Atti e Memorie
della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna' (to
which I am a subscriber), containing an elaborate and scholarlike article
by S. Augusto Gaudenzi, entitled 'L'Opera di Cassiodorio a Ravenna.' It
is a satisfaction to me to see that in several instances S. Gaudenzi and I
have reached practically the same conclusions; but I cannot but regret
that his paper reached me too late to prevent my benefiting from it
more fully. A few of the more important points in which I think S.
Gaudenzi throws useful light on our common subject are noticed in the
'Additions and Corrections,' to which I beg to draw my readers'
attention.
I may perhaps be allowed to add that the Index, the preparation of
which has