imputed not to the barrenness of the times but to official
negligence, whose true child it will manifestly appear.'

[Footnote 26: Var. i. 35.]

[Footnote 27: Echeneis.]

It is not likely that Theodoric ever read a letter like this before
affixing to it his (perhaps stencilled) signature. If he did, he must
surely have smiled to see his few angry Teutonic words transmuted into
this wonderful rhapsody about sucking-fishes and torpedoes and
shell-fish in the Indian Sea.

[Sidenote: Character of Cassiodorus.]

The French proverb 'Le style c'est l'homme,' is not altogether true as
to the character of Cassiodorus. From his inflated and tawdry style we
might have expected to find him an untrustworthy friend and an
inefficient administrator. This, however, was not the case. As was
before said, his character was not heroic; he was, perhaps, inclined
to humble himself unduly before mere power and rank, and he had the
fault, common to most rhetoricians, of over-estimating the power of
words and thinking that a few fluent platitudes would heal inveterate
discords and hide disastrous blunders. But when we have said this we
have said the worst. He was, as far as we have any means of judging, a
loyal subject, a faithful friend, a strenuous and successful
administrator, and an exceptionally far-sighted statesman. His right
to this last designation rests upon the part which he bore in the
establishment of the Italian Kingdom 'of the Goths and Romans,'
founded by the great Theodoric.