." This
must, of course, have been the king's own sentiment, but Cassiodorus
worded it, and doubtless with approval.

Indeed, we are at no loss to discern the mind of the secretary in these
official papers. Cassiodorus speaks as often for himself as for the
king; he delights to expatiate, from an obviously personal point of
view, on any subject that interests him. One of these is natural
history; give him but the occasion, and he gossips of beasts, birds,
and fishes, in a flow of the most genial impertinence. Certain bronze
elephants on the Via Sacra are falling to pieces and must be repaired:
in giving the order, Theodoric's minister pens a little treatise on the
habits and characteristics of the elephant. His erudition is often
displayed: having to convey some direction about the Circus at Rome, he
begins with a pleasant sketch of the history of chariot racing. One
marvels at the man who, in such a period, preserved this mood of
liberal leisure. His style is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse,
ornate, amusingly affected; altogether a _precious_ mode of writing,
characteristic of literary decadence. When the moment demands it, he is
pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he
becomes involved and obscure. We perceive in him a born courtier, a
proud noble, a statesman of high purpose and no little sagacity;
therewith, many gracious and attractive qualities, coloured by
weaknesses, such as agreeable pedantry and amiable self-esteem, which
are in part personal, partly the note of his time.

One's picture of the man is, of course, completed from a knowledge of
the latter years of his life, of the works produced during his monastic
retirement. Christianity rarely finds expression in the _Variae_, a
point sufficiently explained by the Gothic heresy, which imposed
discretion in public utterances; on the other hand, pagan mythology
abounds; we observe the hold it still had upon educated
minds--education, indeed, meaning much the same thing in the sixth
century after Christ as in the early times of the Empire. Cassiodorus
can never have been a fanatical devotee of any creed. Of his sincere
piety there is no doubt; it appears in a vast commentary on the Psalms,
and more clearly in the book he wrote for the guidance and edification
of his brother monks--brothers (_carissimi fratres_), for in his
humility he declined to become the Abbot of Vivariense; enough that his
worldly dignity, his spiritual and