Ancient and Modern be drawn elsewhere than in the fifth and sixth
centuries, at any rate it is safe to say, that he stood on the
boundary of two worlds, the Roman and the Teutonic.

[Sidenote: Also on the confines of Politics and Religion.]

But the statesman who, after spending thirty years at the Court of
Theodoric and his daughter, spent thirty-three years more in the
monastery which he had himself erected at Squillace, was a borderer in
another sense than that already mentioned--a borderer between the two
worlds of Politics and Religion; and in this capacity also, as the
contemporary, perhaps the friend, certainly the imitator, of St.
Benedict, and in some respects the improver upon his method,
Cassiodorus largely helped to mould the destinies of mediaeval and
therefore of modern Europe.

I shall now proceed to indicate the chief points in the life and
career of Cassiodorus. Where, as is generally the case, our
information comes from his own correspondence, I shall, to avoid
repetition, not do much more than refer the reader to the passage in
the following collection, where he will find the information given as
nearly as may be in the words of the great Minister himself.

[Sidenote: His ancestors.]

The ancestors of Cassiodorus for three generations, and their public
employments, are enumerated for us in the letters (Var. i. 3-4) which
in the name of Theodoric he wrote on his father's elevation to the
Patriciate. From these letters we learn that--