ibuted in July, 1880, to the 'Church Quarterly Review.'
There is also a very good though necessarily brief notice of
Cassiodorus in _Ugo Balzani's_ little volume on the 'Early Chroniclers
of Italy,' published by the Christian Knowledge Society in 1883.

CHAPTER VI.

CHRONOLOGY.

In the following chronological table of the life of Cassiodorus I
have, for convenience sake, assumed 480 as the year of his birth, and
575 as that of his death. It is now, I think, sufficiently proved that
if these dates are not absolutely correct, they cannot be more than a
year or two wrong in one direction or the other.

[Sidenote: Consular Fasti.]

As dates were still reckoned by Consulships, at any rate through the
greater part of the life of Cassiodorus, I have inserted the Consular
Fasti for the period in question. It will be seen that several names
of correspondents of Cassiodorus figure in this list. As a general
though not universal practice, one of the two Consuls at this time was
chosen from out of the Senate of Rome and the other from that of
Constantinople. We can almost always tell whether a chronicler belongs
to the Eastern or Western Empire by observing whether he puts the
Eastern or Western Consul first. Thus, for A.D. 501, Marcellinus
Comes, who was an official of the Eastern Empire, gives us 'Pompeius
et Avienus, Coss.;' while Cassiodorus, in his 'Chronicon,' assigns the
year to 'Avienus et Pompeius.' Pompeius was a nobleman of
Constantinople, nephew of the Emperor Anastasius; while Avienus was a
Roman Senator[186]. Again, in A.D. 490, Marcellinus gives the names of
Longinus and Faustus, which Cassiodorus quotes as Faustus and
Longinus. Longinus was a brother of the Emperor Zeno, and Faustus was
for many years Praetorian Praefect under Theodoric, and was the
receiver of many letters in the following collection.

[Footnote 186: See Usener, p. 32.]

I have endeavoured to give the priority always to the _Western_ Consul
in the list before us, except in those cases where an Emperor (who was
of course an Eastern) condescended to assume the Consular _trabea_.

[Sidenote: Indictions.]

Another mode of reckoning the dates which the reader will continually
meet with in the following pages is by _Indictions_. The Indiction, as
is well known, was a cycle of fifteen years, during which, as we have
reason to believe, the assessment for the taxes remained undisturbed,
a fresh valuation being made all round when the cycl