se it is the most recently opened source of information as to the life and works of Cassiodorus, and on

chichte 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 co

tion of

ance, 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

the Anecdo

istro Officiorum, quem scripsit ad Rufum Petronium Nicomachum ex-Consule Ordinario Patricium et Magistrum Offic

s imitator, sed virtutes veterum sanctissima religione transcendit. Dixit sententiam pro all

a oratione laudavit. Scripsit librum de Sancta Trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium. Condidit et carmen bucolicum. Sed

chi regis Gothorum facundissime recitasset, ab eo Quaestor est factus. Patricius et Consul Ordinarius, postmodum dehinc Magister Officiorum [et praefuisset formulas dictionum, qu

an incorrect designation. 'Vir eruditissimus,' in the last paragraph, is probably due to the same hand, as, with all his willingness to do justice to his own good qualities, Cassiodorus would hardly have spoken thus of himself in a work avowedly proceeding from his own pen. The clause which is placed in brackets [et ... superposuit] is probably also due to the copyist, anxious to supply what he deemed the

the fr

n on Jan. 1, 522, is also referred to. Persons to whom addressed.The name of the person to whom the letter is addressed is given as Rufius Petronius Nicomachus. Usener, however, shows good reason for thinking that his final name, the name by which he was known in the consular lists, is omitted, and that his full designation w

ob

the transcribers. At least it does not appear that they would correctly describe the descent of Symmachus and Boethius, though they were relations of Cassiodorus, being descended from or allied to the great house of the Aurelii from which he als

as to life o

t he had attained the rank of Patricius, which may perhaps have been bestowed upon him when he laid down the Consulship. He was 'a philosopher, and a modern imitator of the ancient Cato; but surpassed the virtues of the men of old by [his devotion to] our most holy religion.' This sentence quite accords with all that we hear of the character of Symmachus from our other authorities-the 'Anonymus Valesii,' Procopius, and Boethius. The blending of old Roman gravity and Christian piety in su

There seems much probability in Usener's contention that these 'allecticii' were men who had been 'allecti,' or admitted by co-optation into the Senate during the reign of Odovacar, and

Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (Consul in 394[103]), whose granddaughter married Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus, and was the grandmother of our Symmachus. This Flavianus, who was in his time one of the c

in, and once as to his death[104]. Usener thinks that the 'Anecdoton Holderi' authorises us henceforward to assign these quotations without doubt to the younger, Christian Symmachus, not to his Pagan ancestor. To me the allusion to pare

as to life

our of the Consulship in 510 we know from the 'Fasti Consulares;' but it is perplexing to find him even before that year spoken of[106] as Patricius, since this honour was generally bestowed only on those who had already sat in the curule chair of the Consul[107]. The high consideration in which he was held at the Court of Theodoric, and the value placed upon his scientific attainments, are sufficiently proved by the letters in the following collection, especially by those in which he is consulted about the frauds committed by the officers of the Mint, about the water-clock which is to be sent to Gundobad King of the Burgundians, and the harper who is to be provided for the King of the Franks[108]. In the year 522 his two sons, Symmachus and Boethius, though they had but just attained to man's estate, received the honour of the

logical

n we come to the statement of the literary labours of Boethius the case is entirely altered. It is well known that in the

e 'De Sancta

et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de Div

iae in eo quod sint bonae sint

Fide Ca

Eutychen et

t seems to have been included with the others by some mistake, and I shall therefore in the followin

religious posit

of Philosophy.' Here, in these theological treatises, we have the author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him-a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity-the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of a Theist only; and fro

that his theory would remove. To any person acquainted with the thoughts and words of the little coterie of Roman nobles to which Boethius belonged, it will seem absolutely impossible that the son-in-law of Symmachus, the receiver of the praises

tises and that of the 'Consolation' itself. They are, after all, philosophical rather than religious; one of the earliest samples of that kind of logical discussion of theological dogmas which the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages so delighted to indulge in. The young philosopher, hearing at his father-in-law's table the discussions between Chalcedonian and Monophysite with which all Rome resounded, on account of the prolonged strife with the Church

pitfalls in the way deterred him from that dangerous journey, where the slightest deviation on either side landed him in some detested heresy, the heresy of Nestorius or of Eutyches. 'On revient toujours à ses premiers amours;' and even so Boethiu

up in the Christian domain, in the sixth century the remembrance of the old opposition between Christianity and Philosophy was perhaps still too strong for

ic Poem o

t, and helps to explain the facility with which he breaks into song in the midst of the 'Consolation.' It

uondam studio

moestos cogor

re of this 'Bucolic Poem' indited

iodo

n that capacity he recited an eloquent panegyric on Theodoric, which was rewarded by his promotion to the high office of the Quaestorship, are facts which we learn from this fragment only; and they are of high im