from Herodotus and Trogus are of little or no value, and his
first step in the process of enquiry is to eliminate them from
'Gothica historia,' thus making it, as far as he can, _not_ 'Romana.'
The question then arises whether there was another truly Gothic
element in the history of Cassiodorus, and if so, what value can be
attached to it. Thus enquiring we soon find, both before and after
this intrusive Scytho-Getic element, matter of quite a different kind,
which has often much of the ring of the true Teutonic _Saga_. It is
reasonable to believe that here Cassiodorus, whose mission it was to
reconcile Roman and Goth, and who could not have achieved this end by
altering the history of the less civilised people out of all
possibility of recognition by its own chieftains and warriors, has
really interwoven in his work some part of the songs and Sagas which
were still current among the older men who had shared the wanderings
of Theodoric. This legendary portion, which Cassiodorus himself
perhaps half despised, as being gathered not from books but from the
lips of rude minstrels, is in fact the only part of his work which has
any scientific value.

[Sidenote: The Amal pedigree.]

In his glorification of the Amal line, Cassiodorus follows more
closely these genuine national traditions than in his history of the
Gothic people. References to Herodotus and Trogus would have been here
obviously out of place, and he accordingly puts before us a pedigree
fashioned on the same model as those which we find in the Saxon
Chronicle, and therefore probably genuine. By genuine of course is
meant a pedigree which was really current and accepted among the
people over whom Theodoric ruled. How many of the links which form it
represent real historical personages is a matter about which we may
almost be said neither to know nor care. We see that it begins in the
approved fashion with 'Non puri homines sed semidei id est Anses[44],'
and that the first of these half-divine ancestors is named _Gaut_,
evidently the eponymous hero of the Gothic people. Some of the later
links--Amal, Ostrogotha, Athal--have the same appearance of names
coined to embody facts of the national consciousness. At the end of
the genealogy appear the undoubtedly historical names of the immediate
ancestors of Theodoric. It is noteworthy that several, in fact the
majority of the names of Kings who figure in early Gothic history, are
not included in this genealogy. While