least that alien is no
new-comer into greatness. He and his progenitors have been crowned Kings
for centuries. His people, who are quartered among you and claim
one-third of the soil of Italy, are an old, historic people. Their
ancestors fought under the walls of Troy; they defeated Cyrus, King of
Persia; they warred not ingloriously with Perdiccas of Macedonia".

These classical elements of the Gothic history of Cassiodorus (which
rest chiefly on a misunderstanding of the vague and unscientific term
"Scythians") are valueless for the purposes of history; but the old
Gothic Sagas, of which he has evidently also preserved some fragments,
are both interesting and valuable. When a nation has played so important
a part on the theatre of the world as that assigned to the Goths, even
their legendary stories of the past are precious. Whether these early
Amal Kings fought and ruled and migrated as the Sagas represent them to
have done, or not, in any case the belief that these were their
achievements was a part of the intellectual heritage of the Gothic
peoples. The songs to whose lullaby the cradle of a great nation is
rocked are a precious possession to the historian.

The other most important work of Cassiodorus is the collection of
letters called the _Variae,_ in twelve books. This collection contains
all the chief state-papers composed by him during the period (somewhat
more than thirty years) which was covered by his official life. Five
books are devoted to the letters written at the dictation of Theodoric;
two to the _Formulae_ or model-letters addressed to the various
dignitaries of the State on their accession to office; three to the
letters written in the name of Theodoric's immediate successors (his
grandson, daughter, and nephew); and two to those written by Cassiodorus
himself in his own name when he had attained the crowning dignity of
Praetorian Prefect.

I have already made some extracts from this collection of "Various
Epistles" and the reader, from the specimens thus submitted to him, will
have formed some conception of the character of the author's style. That
style is diffuse and turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the
prevailing faults of the sixth century, an age of literary decay, when
the language of Cicero and Virgil was falling into its dotage. There is
much ill-timed display of irrelevant learning, and a grievous absence of
simplicity and directness, in the "Various Epistles". It must be
regar