some authors[32] assigned to a date some years before the war actually
broke out; but though this cannot, perhaps, be disproved, it seems to
me much more probable that they were written in the early part of 507
on the eve of the war between Clovis and Alaric, which they were
powerless to avert.

[Footnote 32: Especially Binding, Geschichte des
Burgundisch-Romanischen Königreichs, p. 181.]

[Sidenote: Duration of Cassiodorus' office.]

More difficult than the question of the beginning of the Quaestorship
of Cassiodorus is that of its duration and its close. It was an office
which was in its nature an annual one. At the commencement of each
fresh year 'of the Indiction,' that is on the first of September of
the calendar year, a Quaestor was appointed; but there does not seem
to have been anything to prevent the previous holder of the office
from being re-appointed. In the case of Cassiodorus, the Quaestor
after Theodoric's own heart, his intimate friend and counsellor, this
may have been done for several years running, or he may have
apparently retired from office for a year and then resumed it. It is
clear, that whether in or out of office he had always, as the King's
friend, a large share in the direction of State affairs. He himself
says, in a letter supposed to be addressed to himself after the death
of Theodoric[33]: 'Non enim proprios fines sub te _ulla dignitas_
custodivit;' and that this was the fact we cannot doubt. Whatever his
nominal dignity might be, or if for the moment he possessed no
ostensible office at all, he was still virtually what we should call
the Prime Minister of the Ostrogothic King[34].