his Praetorian Praefects. Liberius, a man of whom history knows too
little, had amid general applause steered the vessel of the State for
the first seven years of the new reign. The elder Cassiodorus, who had
succeeded him, seemed likely to follow the same course. But possibly
Theodoric had begun to feel the necessity laid upon all rulers of men,
not only to be, but also to seem, anxious for the welfare of their
subjects. Possibly some dull, unsympathetic Quaestor had failed to
present the generous thoughts of the King in a sufficiently attractive
shape to the minds of the people. This much at all events we know,
that when the young Consiliarius, high-born, fluent, and learned,
poured forth his stream of panegyric on 'Our Lord Theodoric'--a
panegyric which, to an extent unusual with these orations, reflected
the real feelings of the speaker, and all the finest passages of which
were the genuine outcome of his own enthusiasm--the great Ostrogoth
recognised at once the man whom he was in want of to be the exponent
of his thoughts to the people, and by one stroke of wise audacity
turned the boyish and comparatively obscure Assessor into the
Illustrious Quaestor, one of the great personages of his realm.

[Sidenote: Composition of the VARIAE.]

[Sidenote: Their style.]

The monument of the official life of Cassiodorus is the correspondence
styled the 'Variae,' of which an abstract is now submitted to the
reader. There is no need to say much here, either as to the style or
the thoughts of these letters; a perusal of a few pages of the
abstract will give a better idea of both than an elaborate
description. The style is undoubtedly a bad one, whether it be
compared with the great works of Greek and Latin literature or with