commentator himself.

[Sidenote: Historia Tripartita.]

(3) In order to supply the want of any full Church History in the
Latin tongue, a want which was probably felt not only by his own monks
but throughout the Churches of the West, Cassiodorus induced his
friend Epiphanius to translate from the Greek the ecclesiastical
histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and then himself fused
these three narratives into one, the well-known 'Historia Tripartita,'
which contains the story of the Church's fortunes from the accession
of Constantine to the thirty-second year of the reign of Theodosius II
(306-439). The fact that the numerous mistranslations of Epiphanius
have passed uncorrected, probably indicates that Cassiodorus' own
knowledge of Greek was but slight, and that he depended on his
coadjutor entirely for this part of the work. The 'Historia
Tripartita' has probably had a larger circulation than any other of
its author's works; but Cassiodorus himself thought so little of his
share in it, that he does not include it in the list of his writings
prefixed to the treatise 'De Orthographiâ.' And, in fact, the
inartistic way in which the three narratives are soldered together,
rather than recast into one symmetrical and harmonious whole, obliges
us to admit that Cassiodorus' work at this book was little more than
mechanical, and entitles him to scarcely any other praise than that of
industry.

[Sidenote: Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum.]

(4) Of a different quality, though still partaking somewhat of the
nature of a compilation, was his chief educational treatise, the