nder
his control are concisely stated to be 'Laws which are to be dictated,
and Petitions.'

[Footnote 24: 'Sub dispositione viri illustris Quaestoris

Leges dictandae
Preces.

Officium non habet sed adjutores de scriniis quos voluerit.']

To him therefore was assigned the duty (which the British Parliament
in its folly assigns to no one) of giving a final revision to the laws
which received the Sovereign's signature, and seeing that they were
consistent with one another and with previous enactments, and were
clothed in fitting language. He replied in the Sovereign's name to the
petitions which were presented to him. He also, as we learn from
Cassiodorus, had audience with the ambassadors of foreign powers, to
whom he addressed suitable and stately harangues, or through whom he
forwarded written replies to the letters which they had brought, but
always of course speaking or writing in the name of his master. In the
performance of these duties he had chiefly to rely on his own
intellectual resources as a trained jurist and rhetorician. The large
official staff which waited upon the nod of the other great Ministers
of State was absent from his apartments[25]; but for the mere manual
work of copying, filing correspondence, and the like, he could summon
the needful number of clerks from the four great bureaux (scrinia)
which were under the control of the Master of the Offices.

[Footnote 25: Officium non habet.]

We have an interesting summary of the Quaestor's duties and privileges
from the pen of Cassiodorus himself in the 'Variae' (vi. 5), under the
title 'Formula Quaesturae,' and to this document I refer the reader
who wishes to complete the picture of the occupations in which the
busiest years of the life of Cassiodorus were passed.

[Sidenote: Special utility of a Quaestor to Theodoric.]

To a ruler in Theodoric's position the acquisition of such a Quaestor
as Cassiodorus was a most fortunate event. He himself was doubtless
unable to speak or to write Latin with fluency. According to the
common story, which passes current on the authority of the 'Anonymus
Valesii,' he never could learn to write, and had to 'stencil' his
signature. I look upon this story with some suspicion, especially
because it is also told of his contemporary, the Emperor Justin; but I
have no doubt that such literary education as Theodoric ever received
was Greek rather than Latin, being imparted during the ten years of
his res