The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Cassiodorus, by
Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

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Title: The Letters of Cassiodorus
Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator

Author: Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

Translator: Thomas Hodgkin

Release Date: June 15, 2006 [EBook #18590]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS

_HODGKIN_

Oxford

PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

THE

LETTERS OF CASSIODORUS

BEING

A CONDENSED TRANSLATION OF THE VARIAE EPISTOLAE
OF MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS SENATOR

With an Introduction

BY

THOMAS HODGKIN

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; HON. D.C.L. OF DURHAM UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR OF 'ITALY AND HER INVADERS'

LONDON: HENRY FROWDE
AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

1886.

[_All rights reserved_]

PREFACE.

The abstract of the 'Variae' of Cassiodorus which I now offer to the
notice of historical students, belongs to that class of work which
Professor Max Mueller happily characterised when he entitled two of his
volumes 'Chips from a German Workshop.' In the course of my
preparatory reading, before beginning the composition of the third and
fourth volumes of my book on 'Italy and Her Invaders,' I found it
necessary to study very attentively the 'Various Letters' of
Cassiodorus, our best and often our only source of information, for
the character and the policy of the great Theodoric. The notes which
in this process were accumulated upon my hands might, I hoped, be
woven into one long chapter on the Ostrogothic government of Italy.
When the materials were collected, however, they were so manifold, so
perplexing, so full of curious and unexpected detail, that I quite
despaired of ever s