be identified with the Fontana della Panaghia, a small fountain by the
sea-shore at the south end of a little bay under the promontory of S.
Gregorio. The so-called Fontana di Cassiodoro, near Coscia, has
received its name and its present appearance in modern times, and is
much too far from the sea to be the Fountain of Arethusa.

CHAPTER II.

THE ANECDOTON HOLDERI.

A few pages must be devoted to the MS. bearing the somewhat uncouth
title of 'Anecdoton Holderi,' because it is the most recently opened
source of information as to the life and works of Cassiodorus, and one
which, if genuine, settles some questions which have been long and
vigorously debated among scholars.

My information on the subject is derived from a pamphlet of 79 pages
by Hermann Usener, printed at Bonn in 1877, and bearing the title
'Anecdoton Holderi: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in Ostgothischer
Zeit.' I am indebted to Mr. Bywater, of Exeter College, Oxford, for my
introduction to this pamphlet, which, while strikingly confirming some
conclusions which I had come to from my own independent study of the
'Variae,' has been of the greatest possible service to me in studying
the lives of Cassiodorus and Boethius.

[Sidenote: Description of the MS.]

The 'Anecdoton' (which loses its right to that name by Usener's
publication of it) was discovered by Alfred Holder in a MS. known as
Codex Augiensis, No. CVL, which came from the Monastery of Reichenau
and is now in the Grand-Ducal Library at Carlsruhe. The monks of the
fertile island of Reichenau (Augia Dives), in the Lake of Constance,
were celebrated in the ninth and tenth centuries for their zeal in the
collection and transcription of manuscripts. The well-known Codex
Augiensis (an uncial MS. of the Greek text of the New Testament, with
the Vulgate version in parallel columns) is referred by
palaeographers to the ninth century[96]. The Codex Augiensis with
which we are now concerned, and which is a copy of the 'Institutiones
Humanarum Rerum' of Cassiodorus, is believed to have been written in
the next succeeding century. On the last page of this MS. Holder
discovered the fragment--not properly belonging to the
'Institutiones'--to which he has given his name, and which is as
follows[97]:--

[Footnote 96: See Scrivener, Plain Introduction to the Criticism of
the New Testament, pp. 133-4.]

[Footnote 97: I have adopted the emendations--most of them the
corrections of obvious mistake