ness to do
justice to his own good qualities, Cassiodorus would hardly have
spoken thus of himself in a work avowedly proceeding from his own pen.
The clause which is placed in brackets [et ... superposuit] is
probably also due to the copyist, anxious to supply what he deemed the
imperfections of his memorandum. In short, it must be admitted that
the fragment cannot consist of the very words of Cassiodorus in
however abbreviated a form. Still it contains so much that is
valuable, and that could hardly have been invented by any writer of a
post-Cassiodorian age, that it is well worthy of the careful and, so
to speak, microscopical examination to which it has been subjected by
Usener.

[Sidenote: Date of the fragment.]

[Sidenote: Persons to whom addressed.]

The work from which these 'Excerpta' are taken was composed, according
to Usener, in the year 522. This is proved by the facts that the
receiver of the letter is spoken of as Magister Officiorum, a post
which he apparently held from Sept. 1, 521, to Sept. 1, 522; and that
the Consulship of the two sons of Boethius, which began on Jan. 1,
522, is also referred to. The name of the person to whom the letter is
addressed is given as Rufius Petronius Nicomachus. Usener, however,
shows good reason for thinking that his final name, the name by which
he was known in the consular lists, is omitted, and that his full
designation was Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus, Consul in 504,
Magister Officiorum (as above stated) in 521-522, and Patrician. He
was probably the same Cethegus whom Procopius mentions[100] as
Princeps Senatus, and as withdrawing from Rome to Centumcellae in the
year 545 because he was accused of treachery to the Imperial
cause[101].

[Footnote 100: De Bello Gotthico iii. 13 (p. 328, ed. Bonn).]

[Footnote 101: If Usener be right (and he has worked up this point
with great care), we can trace the following links in the pedigree of
Cethegus (see pp. 6 and 11):

Rufius Petronius _Placidus_, Consul 481.
|
Rufius Petronius Anicius _Probinus_, Consul 489.
|
Rufius Petronius Nicomachus _Cethegus_, Consul 504, correspondent of
Cassiodorus.

Probinus and Cethegus are referred to by Ennodius in his letter to
Ambrosius and Beatus, otherwise called his Paraenesis (p. 409, ed.
Hartel).]

[Sidenote: Its object.]

The object of the little treatise referred