e occurs in the original, is
puzzling.)

"Other matters we have left to be suggested to your Piety verbally by
the bearers of this letter, that on the one hand this epistolary speech
of ours may not become too prolix, and on the other that nothing may be
omitted which would tend to our common advantage".

The letter which I have attempted thus to bring before the reader is one
which almost defies accurate translation. It is an exceedingly
diplomatic document, full of courtesy, yet committing the writer to
nothing definite. The very badness of his style enables Cassiodorus to
envelop his meaning in a cloud of words from which the Quaestor of
Anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaning then,
as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible
English now. It is certainly difficult to acquit Cassiodorus of the
charge of a deficient sense of humour, when we find him putting into the
mouth of his master, who had so often marched up and down through
Thrace, ravaging and burning, these solemn praises of "Tranquillity".
And when we read the fulsome flattery which is lavished on Anastasius,
the almost obsequious humbleness with which the great Ostrogoth, who was
certainly the stronger monarch of the two, prays for a renewal of his
friendship, we may perhaps suspect either that the "illiteratus Rex" did
not comprehend the full meaning of the document to which he attached his
signature, or that Cassiodorus himself, in his later years, when, after
the death of his master, he republished his "Various Letters", somewhat
modified their diction so as to make them more Roman, more diplomatic,
more slavishly subservient to the Emperor, than Theodoric himself would
ever have permitted.

One other act of this Emperor must be noticed, as illustrating the
subject of the last chapter. When Clovis returned in triumph from the
Visigothic war (508) he found messengers awaiting him from Anastasius,
who brought to him some documents from the Imperial chancery which are
somewhat obscurely described as "Codicils of the Consulship". Then, in
the church of St. Martin at Tours he was robed in a purple tunic and
_chlamys,_ and placed apparently on his own head some semblance of the
Imperial diadem. At the porch of the basilica he mounted his horse and
rode slowly through the streets of the city to the other chief church,
scattering largesse of gold and silver to the shouting multitude. "From
that day", we are